Lightning-fast security check for your PCs
Posted 8 June 2007 at 12:18PM by Simon Dickson in Internet security
Even if your PC is tooled up with anti-virus and anti-spyware software - which, of course, it is... isn't it? - it's worth getting a second opinion every now and again. These days, anti-virus programs typically work on two levels: they look for characteristics of known viruses, and they apply what's known as 'heuristics' to look for suspicious activity, which might be an as-yet unknown virus. You'd expect most good tools to work equally well on the former, but their definitions of 'suspicious' are likely to differ. So if your PC is playing up, and you've checked everything else, it might be time to try a different virus check.
Which is where the new NanoScan website from Spanish-based specialists Panda Software comes in. It checks all the active processes on your PC, looking for traces of nearly a million viruses, with Panda's TruPrevent technology also carrying out a heuristic analysis. It's free and it's fast. They say a test will take less than a minute, and they aren't kidding.
Panda also offers a more detailed test facility, called TotalScan - also free, but naturally it takes a good bit longer. A full examination can take up to an hour; and if you want Panda's tools to fix any problems it finds, you'll have to register. But it's always worth keeping the details of sites like this in your 'favourites' - particularly when you note that Panda's online tools detect problems on nearly 60% of the machines they test. And startlingly, that includes more than half the PCs which have anti-virus software already installed.
Tags: anti-virus, heuristics, internet security, nanoscan, panda, totalscan
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1. At June 10, 2007 8:34 PM, Tom wrote: