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ISAT

ISAT

ISAT 216
Homework 2
10 points
Security professionals debate the effectiveness of modern anti-virus and anti-malware tools,
however, it is still recommended they be installed and kept up to date on computers and
smartphones. In this exercise, investigate the status of the anti-virus or anti-malware installed on
a personal or lab computer. Answer the following questions and provide screenshots to prove
successful completion of tasks.
1. What software product is used?
2. Why was this product selected to use on the computer?
3. What are “signatures” when discussing anti-malware software?
4. What is the date of the currently installed signatures on the software?
5. Perform an update of the signatures and show whether newer signatures were available.
6. Perform a full scan of the system using the tool. Provide a screenshot showing the results.
This may take several hours.
7. What other features or capabilities are provided by the software?
8. Find an example online of security software for smartphones and briefly describe its
features.
9. Which platform is more secure, Android or iOS. Justify your answer.
10. Are there examples of computer systems for which anti-virus systems are not
recommended to be installed?

All student submissions should be individually written, not copied from sources.
Submissions with excessive quoting of sources will have points deducted.
All homework assignments should be submitted according to the following formatting
guidelines.
1. A single title page with student name, course number, assignment number, and
topic/description/title of the assignment should be at the beginning of the submission.
2. The last page of the assignment should contained sources used for the assignment.
Number the sources and cite them according to APA format.
3. Written text should make up pages between the title and reference pages.
4. Written text should use 12 point Times New Roman, double spaced, and 1” margins all
around the document.
5. Submissions should be in DOC, DOCX, or PDF format. If using Open Office, convert to
one of these formats before submitting.
6. Submit via D2L by the assigned due date.
7. Name the submission file according to the convention
LASTNAME_HWX_ISAT41X.DOC. Substitute your first and last name, the appropriate
course number, and homework number.

Answer

  1. Norton AntiVirus security software by Symantec
  2. It is well known and trusted AV, easy to use and offer plenty of features.
  3. Signatures refer to algorithms or hashes that exclusively recognize a particular virus. Depending on the scanner used in identifying a virus, signatures can be static hashes – calculated a numeric value of a code unique to the virus or less commonly, algorithms – flag the virus as suspicious and prompt the user for a decision (Caruso, 2003).
  4. The currently installed signatures on Norton Antivirus software were installed on June 18, 2013, AntiVirus signatures.
  5. Perform an update:
  6. Perform a full scan:
  7. Other Features
  8. Proactive Exploit Protection (PEP) – prevents computers and smartphones from zero-day attacks that may tend to feat the undiscovered and unpatched holes.
  9. b. It often schedules resource-intensive tasks when one does not use their computers.
  10. Its protection system provides various patented layers of protection to identify and eliminate virus more quickly and accurately.
  11. It has an Intelligence-driven Norton Insight technology feature that aims at those files at risk for fewer, faster and shorter scans.
  12. It has Norton Download 2.0 feature that enables the users to identify a downloaded application or file considered unsafe before the user installs or let it run on the device (Edge, & O’Donnell, 2016).
  13. McAfee Managed VirusScan Plus AntiSpyWare.

Main Features:

  1. Two years license validation period
  2. One node license quantity
  3. Subscription license type
  4. 26 to 50 volume pricing range
  5. A recent 2018 research (Ubhi et al., 2017) shows that IOS platform is still secure than Andriod’s. Android still experienced major security breaches, for example, Uber data breach, within the past years placing android behind in the update world. Apple, however, has been consistently taking security to the next level especially with its Touch ID and the FaceID. These two brands can send out updates to their devices quickly.
  6. All computer systems are recommended to have an installed anti-virus system to prevent them from security threats and to allow them to perform basic maintenance tasks (Caruso, 2003).

References

Caruso, R. D. (2003). Personal computer security: Part 1. Firewalls, antivirus software, and Internet             security suites. Radiographic, 23(5), 1329-1337.

Edge, C., & O’Donnell, D. (2016). Malware Security: Combating Viruses, Worms, and RootKits.             In Enterprise Mac Security (pp. 221-242). Après, Berkeley, CA.

Ubhi, H. K., Kotz, D., Michie, S., van Schayck, O. C., & West, R. (2017). A comparison of the             characteristics of iOS and Android users’ security. Translational    behavioral       medicine, 7(2), 166-171.