CompTIA Security+ All-in-One Exam Guide (Exam SY0-301), 3rd Edition, 3rd Edition

PC-based Malware Protection

In the early days of PC use, threats were limited: most home users were not connected to the Internet 24/7 through broadband connections, and the most common threat was a virus passed from computer to computer via an infected floppy disk (much like the medical definition, a computer virus is something that can infect the host and replicate itself). But things have changed dramatically over the last decade and current threats pose a much greater risk than ever before. According to SANS Internet Storm Center, the average survival time of an unpatched Windows PC on the Internet is less than 60 minutes (http://isc.sans.org/survivaltime.html). This is the estimated time before an automated probe finds the system, penetrates ...