What is the difference between antivirus and anti-malware programs?

 

When someone starts looking for protection and computer security online, they will most likely eventually discover that there are two main types of security that control this factor: antivirus and anti-malware. Which leads them to the inevitable question: What is the difference between them?

 

If you do not have antivirus software running on your computer, then your computer is open to security threats, especially if you are constantly connected to the Internet.

 

With the growth of viruses nowadays, it has become necessary for every user to protect their device with the best antivirus software to avoid any kind of security attack.

 

Whereas, on the other hand, anti-malware tools are simply designed to combat "money-making" viruses such as ransomware and Trojans.

 

But what are the real differences between them? If you don't know, don't worry about this, we are about to explain everything in the next lines.

 

First: What are viruses, and what are malware?

 

Before we can answer the question what is the difference between antivirus and antimalware? First, we need to know what viruses and malware are basically. As for viruses, they are of various types, the most famous of which is the Direct Action virus which infiltrates your device and then copies and replicates itself on the entire hard disk in order to harm the computer, including damaging the system and destroying data.

 

But with the passage of time, new types of security threats began to appear that do not match the usual viruses, because the hackers discovered that there was no profit in destroying the data; Meaning that the virus causes, yes, a loss to the user; But what did the virus developer benefit from that? no thing! This fact made hackers more interested in making money for themselves than in causing losses. From here, the malware began to appear.

 

Malware is an umbrella term for a variety of malicious programs such as spyware, adware, ransomware, and viruses. Yes .. as I read! Viruses are malware, but not all malware is viruses. It's confusing, but you'll understand what I mean later.

 

Generally, malware can be used for things like stealing credit card information, revealing the passwords of your online accounts, sending malicious emails...etc. It is programmed to serve its developers in a way that can generate a profit for them. Adware, Spyware, Rootkits, and Trojans are all different types of malware.

 

Ransomware is the newest form of malware currently taking over the Internet. The program simply encrypts data and prevents access to it or even use of the system until a huge ransom is paid to free it.

 

With all that, viruses are considered ancient security threats, and what I mean here is that they have been around for some time in the nineties and the beginning of the third millennium and have not changed much, the same malicious acts are being done to the present day. But it is not used by hackers, because as we have indicated, there is no profit from corrupting data, so much is now focused on malware.

 

For this reason, many antivirus companies have evolved to do more than just “normal antivirus” but also include anti-malware such as worms, keyloggers, and rootkits.

 

So why do antivirus companies still call themselves that, why can't we call Avast or Avira for example anti-malware tools? The reason is that ever since viruses made headlines in the 1990s, security companies have focused their presence on fighting them. This is inferior to generating the term "antivirus". It all boils down to marketing. Most people know about computer viruses and what they do. But they know nothing about malware.

 

Second: What are antivirus and anti-malware programs?

 

Of course, there are major differences between antivirus and anti-malware programs that go beyond linguistic semantics. What distinguishes these companies or programs is the types of malware they specialize in and how they deal with it. Antivirus software usually deals with old, well-established security threats, such as Trojans and worms.

 

On the other hand, anti-malware programs usually focus on new security threats, such as various types of malware such as adware, spyware, theft programs, etc. Antivirus software protects users from persistent, predictable, but still dangerous malware.

 

An anti-malware program protects users from the most dangerous modern threats that may have spread a few hours or days ago. It updates its database daily several times and is faster than antivirus programs.

 

This means that it offers better protection against new malicious programs that you may encounter while browsing the Internet. In contrast, antivirus programs are best at destroying malicious software that may come from local sources such as email or USB flash drives.

 

Third: Which of them should you use?

 

No technology can have it all and dominate the field. For this reason, security experts recommend an approach called "multi-layering" so that you have more than one type of software that specializes in looking for security threats to detect them from different angles since each program has its own mechanism of action.

 

(Antivirus + Anti-Malware)

 

Your best bet is to use both so that your antivirus detects both old and dangerous threats, and your antimalware software detects more advanced security threats.

 

So, it is better to use the two programs together to achieve the best level of protection. If you are using a modern computer, you do not need to worry about the effect of running two security programs at the same time, as most security programs nowadays adapt to this situation so that they work together with anti-software programs Malware such as Windows Defender is the default program to protect users of Windows 10 devices.

 

Be careful not to use more than one antivirus program

 

Unfortunately, the saying “more is better” does not apply to protection programs. Using more than one antivirus on one device may make you think that you have more than one protection layer and more than one step and program that the virus passes through, which makes you feel comfortable and that your device is better. I apologize to you, my dear, because I will tell you that this is all wrong, and most of you must know that it is not correct to use more than one antivirus at the same time, but he does not know the reason behind this, and the reasons and opinions are many, and we will show them to you

 

performance problems

 

When the protection program works on your device, it means that it consumes the device’s resources from RAM, processor, etc., as well as being present at every point and every place where the virus is likely to appear, from placing the flash in the computer until you download any file from the Internet and needs to monitor every activity that occurs in the files To discover any change or event that indicates the presence of a virus... This is a really good thing if you have one antivirus because it will take its role and its natural size in searching for the virus and doing its task, but what do you think if you install more than one antivirus, this makes you consume the resources of the device, especially the memory, which It will not leave you any room for the rest of the tasks and other operations that you perform on the device and you will notice a noticeable weakness in the performance of the computer than before

 

fight over files

 

Going to the worst, the many protection programs on your device will fight among themselves to obtain the necessary powers to detect a virus on your device... The task of any antivirus is to detect the virus and isolate it as soon as possible.

 By downloading a file from the Internet, the security programs on your computer will race to obtain the powers to control this file so that you check it which of those programs will have those powers first. Worse, if it is discovered that this is a virus, this means that action must be taken about it, either deleting it or isolating it, and this will prompt the protection programs to ask you about the action you want to take about this virus.

If you give permission to delete the virus to one of the programs and ignore the other, this may cause the program to make What you ignore keeps telling you that there is a virus on your device even though you have already isolated it and therefore you will find very inaccurate results

 

accusing each other

 

The worst effect of having more than one antivirus installed at the same time is that both programs will not trust each other. When the antivirus program does its work, it assumes that it is the only antivirus on the device. about a virus, and therefore in the best case it will alert you with a false alert about the presence of a virus, which is in fact another antivirus, but in the worst case, the two protection programs may try to delete the files of each of them, which leads to the system instability as well as the corruption of important files

 

What about screening programs?

 

During this article, we have focused on security programs that run in the background and in a deep and advanced level of the operating system, but you may have installed malware scanning software such as anti-malware and anti-spyware to protect your device. But this is different because they do not constantly check your device, but they do so when you ask them to do so. Will these programs cause harm when they are installed alongside protection programs?

 

To answer this question, this will depend on what you use these programs. If this program contains the Real-Time Scanning feature, this of course will affect your protection program and you have to cancel this feature from the program settings and tell it that you will manually scan yourself and therefore there are no problems with using it with any other antivirus program and if you are interested in using scanning programs With protection programs, you can enter the official website of the program and find out which antivirus programs are compatible with it.

 For example, if you use Malwarebytes, it has a list of protection programs that it can work with, while Spybot tells you how to make it work together with another protection program.

 

How to choose the right protection program

 

Choosing the best protection program may make you confused, so we advise you to choose the protection program that eliminates the need to use any additional programs with it.