It is important to have antivirus software to avoid security problems such as virus intrusion, information theft or software installation that can cause system errors. However, it is also important to check if it really works well. If our antivirus doesn't work properly, we basically have nothing.
Steps to see if the antivirus works well
No matter what antivirus you have installed, you can always test it to see if it works well. You just need to get it up and running and it should be fine. From there you can run a test and see if it works fine to avoid bugs if necessary.
Update the antivirus and system
The first step is to make sure your antivirus software is up to date. This means you'll be able to detect the latest threats and be ready to act. Outdated antivirus software can be a big problem and you should always remove it.
It is also interesting to check that the operating system has the latest version. It does not matter if you use Windows or any other, since you should always have all the updates installed and thus correct possible vulnerabilities.
Try a fake virus
Once everything is set up, the next thing to do is try a fake virus. There are several options on the internet, they mainly check the security software alert to see if it detects it as a threat, so they can see that it works fine if necessary.
Wicar allows you to download various files and test them to see if your antivirus is working properly. These are fake viruses whose code does not cause any harm to your computer. However, they will turn on the security program alarm and see that it works.
Do you want to risk using a real virus?
But you can go further. Dare you try a real virus? This is definitely the best way to check if your antivirus is good or bad. However, it is necessary to take into account the risks and know how to do it correctly so that the slightest problems do not arise. Remember this if you want to do this:
Install a virtual machine with Windows
Create a Windows user account other than Administrator
Install the latest version of Python
Download a real virus from GitHub created for testing
Although viruses can escape from virtual machines, this rarely happens. Ideally, we would download a file that we know cannot be executed in this way so that everything stays in the virtual machine. So you can always tell how well your antivirus is working if it starts to crash.