#3, Invest Some Money in a Good Antivirus Program While some updates will be about improving functionality and, in some cases, this may involve adding features which you feel you neither need nor want, many upgrades involve some sort of security improvement, perhaps patching a vulnerability which has been identified or adding a feature to detect a new threat.
3 ways to protect your computer from viruses install#
Updates can be a pain, especially operating system updates which can take a long time to install and almost invariably involve at least one restart. In other words, the computers it infected were running an operating system which was nearly a decade out of date. The WannaCry virus exploited a vulnerability in Windows XP, which had been discontinued in 2008. It would be highly unwise to rely on these systems on their own but they are a good place to start.įor a case study in what can happen when you use an out-of-date operating system, do an internet search on “ Wannacry virus 2017” and read up about the devastation it caused. Apple has XProtect (for both MacOS and iOS), Google has Google Play Protect and Microsoft has Windows Defender. As a result, all the current iterations of the main operating systems have some form of inbuilt security app. These improvements have been a combination of fixing recognized vulnerabilities and trying to monitor for threats and deal with them proactively. #1, Only Use Computers and Mobile Devices with Modern Operating SystemsĪpple, Google and Microsoft have all been improving the security of their operating systems over the course of their existence. BONUS: Use comodo antivirus to get the protection you need.