Integrating Manual Prevention Techniques with Automated Countermeasures for Effectively Averting Malware

In today’s world, computer viruses and other forms of malware are among the biggest of the nightmares that haunt information security experts, not to mention a layman. Antivirus programs are the most common, if not the only, relied upon solution available to deal with malware. Different types of antivirus programs offered by multi-billion dollar antivirus industry, signature-based, heuristic-based and hybrid, are still a long way from meeting the expected level of contribution. Significant performance deterioration is also a major downside of antivirus programs. This paper discusses various manual techniques that can be exercised in combination with existing automated countermeasures in order to help in effectively preventing malware with improved performance. The scope of this paper is limited to Microsoft Windows family of operating systems.