When a virus scanner detects malicious code, it can automatically delete or quarantine the file and alert the user. This can help to prevent lateral movement and stop malware from spreading within the organisation. This prevents cyber attacks from causing system disruptions, data breaches or unauthorized access to confidential information. It also mitigates the impact on company reputation, customer trust and financial losses.

Virus scanning software recognises malware files by their characteristic features. It compares these features with a detailed profile of known intruders, essentially acting like an electronic sheriff. If it detects a match, the intruder is arrested and removed from your computer. To make sure your anti-virus program is catching all the threats, update it regularly.

What Is a File Virus Scanner and Why You Need One

Some types of malware are hard to recognise by signature analysis alone. When this happens, virus scanners may use heuristic analysis to identify potential intruders by searching for patterns in their code that are characteristic of certain malware. These heuristics can include the presence of recognizable command lines, changes to file names or other suspicious characteristics.

Other factors can trigger a virus scan, including unusual slow performance, suspicious application behaviour and a sudden influx of pop-up windows or ads. It’s important to back up any sensitive data before you run a full virus scan.

It’s possible to integrate a file virus scanner into your managed file transfer (MFT) solution, using the built-in tool in Windows 11. However, it can be time consuming to scan every single file for viruses upon upload. The best way to reduce the time it takes to scan files is by scanning them on a schedule – an idle scan, for example, during times when the network isn’t being used. This will allow the virus scanner to run quickly and then pause immediately after the scan is complete.