Memorandum Essay Example

RE: [Proposal for XXX]

Computer Viruses
Introduction
We live in modern IT world, where your personal computer became an essential part of your life. You can’t live a day without going on Facebook or surfing through YouTube funny cat videos. But there a lot of circumstances, that may affect your computer in different ways. There a lot of ways to damage your computer and one of them is computer viruses. In this research we are going to give a definition of computer viruses, how was it created? Giving a detailed information about how to reduce the risk of being infected by computer viruses and what software to use will be another goal of this research.

Statement of Problem

What is computer viruses? Computer virus - type of malicious software that can create copies of itself and implemented into the code of other programs, system memory, boot sectors, as well as distribute copies on a variety of communication channels with the aim of disrupting software and hardware systems, remove files that are listed in the unfit accommodation structures data, blocking of users or the destruction of computer hardware systems.

Getting on the computer, the virus can create copies, distributed, introducing themselves to other programs or replace them.

Computer viruses can cause damage to or removal of information and the transfer of confidential or personal information over the Internet attackers. Computer viruses do not usually work by themselves unless they are ran by administrator.
Even if the virus author is not programmed damaging effects, the virus can lead to computer crashes due to errors, unaccounted subtleties of interaction with the operating system and other programs. Moreover, viruses are usually occupy some space on the storage media and some other selected system resources. Therefore, the virus is a malicious program.
There are many different versions on the date of birth of the first computer virus. However, most experts agree on the idea that computer viruses, as such, first appeared in 1986, although historically the emergence of viruses closely related to the idea of a self-replicating programs. One of the "pioneers" of computer viruses is considered among the virus "Brain", created by the Pakistani programmer by the name Alvi. In the US alone, this virus has infected more than 18 thousand computers. In the early days of computer viruses virus software development was purely exploratory nature, gradually turning to openly hostile attitude to users of irresponsible and even criminal "elements." In some countries, legislation provides for criminal liability for computer crimes, including the creation and spread of viruses.
Viruses do work only, as they are programmed. They are generally attached to a file or a file into the body. In this case we say that the file is infected with a virus. The virus enters the computer only with the infected file. To activate the virus infected file you want to download, and only then, the virus begins to act independently.

Proposed Solution

This section will introduce the best ways to secure your computer being affected by virus. To make your computer infected with one of the viruses, you must confirm something or open. For example, the browser you are asking, "This website is trying to establish such a unit, confirm the action?". The virus is not always a separate file. Virus is often added to the fragments of another file, which is harmless, such as a zip or rar archive. These files are called infected.
Following one simple rule will prevent any viruses: do not install any software on your PC from stranger online sources. Avoid visiting questionable sites. To do this, pay attention to how they are visited, what the reviews written about them, check the history of this site on the Internet. The longer the site works, the more reason you have to trust him. Never open a file on your computer file without checking it before it for viruses. If you do not have antivirus software, you can use the online scanner. Any developer of antivirus software provides a free anti-virus service. You can also take advantage of services such as virustotal.com.
Similarly, proceed with the mail that comes to you. Do not open attachments without checking them. Do not open attachments from spam suspicious messages from addresses, even if you know them. What message can be called suspicious? For example, you have not communicated with their friends, and suddenly you receive a message from him with an attached file, without any further explanation. Such an event should alert you. Most likely, your friend's account was hacked, and now all of his letters which come to you might be infected with the virus.
As a result of the above identified six principles to be followed in dealing with the computer not to be attacked by viruses.
1. Use an anti-virus program. Before you open or download an unknown file, check it for viruses.
2. Install a firewall and even further. It will help to track and prevent unauthorized connections to your PC.
3. Keep your anti-virus database up to date.
4. Set your browser to the maximum security level.
5. Do not install on your browser settings to additional resources in the "purity" of which you are not sure.
6. Do not open email attachments that seem strange to you, even if they come from someone you already know.

Scope

A computer virus is a small program size, specially written to infect other programs and perform unwanted actions on the computer of various kinds. Infected program is a program with located inside the virus. When this program starts, it initially takes control virus. Computer-viruses find and infect other programs, as well as perform all kinds of harmful actions.
Masking, the virus does not always perform any action on the infection of other programs and their harm, and doing certain activities on your computer, the virus can begin its work. After performing the necessary manipulations to it, the virus transfers control to the program, which is, and this program continues to operate normally. So, apparently the work of the infected program does not produce anything itself, and looks like not infected.
Many species of viruses are designed so that when you run an infected program, the virus stays resident in memory (up to reboot the operating system) and possibly infect run programs or perform malicious actions on your computer.
All of the virus performed fairly quickly, not while giving any prior messages, so you cannot help but notice that his computer is something unusual. When infecting a computer a small number of programs - the presence of the virus can be almost imperceptible.

List of potential research questions:

What is a computer virus?
How the virus infects your computer?
On what grounds can detect the fact of infection by computer virus?
What are some types of viruses? What destructive actions they carry out?
What action is taken to prevent infection by computer virus?
What is antivirus software? What types of antivirus software do you know?
Methods
Qualifications
As we can’t live nowadays without using a computer, every computer user is qualified to research/provide feedback on this topic, because it is related to his/her professional experience, education or other type of work. Computer user don’t have be related with this topic, or didn’t meet with this any kind of information before. But if he/she faced with such problem as computer viruses, he or she are welcome to use it.

Limitations

Some viruses during the execution of the infected file are resident (constantly in the computer's RAM) and can infect other downloadable files and programs. Another type of virus immediately start working after activation may be the cause of serious injury, for example, format the hard disk. Action virus can manifest itself in different ways from different visual effects that hinder work to complete loss of information. Most viruses infect executables files with the extension .EXE and .COM, though in recent year’s increasingly popular viruses that spread through e-mail.

Conclusion

In this research proposal we discussed about how our computer systems may get broken and because of what? We gave a definition of computer viruses, how was it created, what kind of computer viruses did exist. This research gave a detailed information about how to reduce the risk of being infected by computer viruses and what software would be a great idea to use. Tips and other important recommendations were given to help a user protect his device from major threats such as computer viruses.

References

Microsoft.com,. (2015). How to Remove and Avoid Computer Viruses. Retrieved 25 January 2015, from http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/security/pc-security/antivirus.aspx
Microsoft.com,. (2015). Computer Virus: What It Is and What It Does. Retrieved 25 January 2015, from http://www.microsoft.com/security/pc-security/virus-whatis.aspx
Runbox,. (2015). What are computer viruses, and how to avoid them - Runbox. Retrieved 25 January 2015, from https://runbox.com/email-school/what-are-computer-viruses-and-how-to-protect-against-them/
Allaboutcookies.org,. (2015). What is a computer virus? Anatomy of Computer Viruses. Retrieved 25 January 2015, from http://www.allaboutcookies.org/security/computer-viruses.html
Microsoft.com,. (2015). Antivirus protection and how to avoid viruses. Retrieved 25 January 2015, from http://www.microsoft.com/security/pc-security/antivirus.aspx