How to check if your antivirus is working properly ?

Virus Guards

anti-virus software is software used to prevent, detect and remove malware (of all descriptions), such as: computer viruses, malicious BHOs, hijackers, ransomware, keyloggers, backdoors, rootkits, trojan horses, worms, malicious LSPs, dialers, fraudtools, adware and spyware.
Computer security, including protection from social engineering techniques, is commonly offered in products and services of antivirus software companies. This page discusses the software used for the prevention and removal of malware threats, rather than computer security implemented by software methods.

How this works ?

The EICAR Standard Anti-Virus Test File or EICAR test file is a computer file that was developed by the European Institute for Computer Antivirus Research (EICAR) and Computer Antivirus Research Organization (CARO), to test the response of computer antivirus (AV) programs. Instead of using real malware, which could do real damage, this test file allows people to test anti-virus software without having to use a real computer virus.

Anti-virus programmers set the EICAR string as a verified virus, similar to other identified signatures. A compliant virus scanner, when detecting the file, will respond in exactly the same manner as if it found a harmful virus. Note that not allvirus scanners are compliant, and some may not detect the file even when they are correctly configured.

How to test your Virus  guard without a real virus that can harm your computer ?

easy, just follow the steps below

• Activate your anti-virus shield
• Open Notepad
• paste the code below

X5O!P%@AP[4PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*

• Now save it as EICAR.COM in your desktop ( or anywhere you can find easily)

If your virus guard is a professional one it won’t even let you to save the file.. But some virus guards do let you save it, and attacks it right after you save it.