McAfee AVERT Stinger

Features Vs Benefits

 

McAfee AVERT Stinger Introduction

The McAfee AVERT Stinger is a standalone scanning engine. It does not scan your system like a full anti-virus but instead targets specific viruses. These viruses tend to be either extremely potent or extremely common on user’s systems and it is important that they are neutralized as quickly and cleanly as possible. In these cases it may be necessary to call in the McAfee AVERT Stinger to scan the desired area of your PC and report its findings. It is set up to automatically remove any infections found on your computer. The Stinger does not replace any existing security software and should be used in addition to powerful anti-virus software.

Extra Defense Against Medium To High Risk Threats

The Stinger is used as a standalone scanning engine. It does only search for medium to high risk infections but it is quick to do so and usually very accurate in its scan. McAfee updates the Stinger whenever a new signature is added to the Avert Labs signature database that is considered a medium or high risk to users.

Limited Virus Definitions

Because the Stinger does not need to scan for every virus within the main signature database it is much more effective at finding those that it does search for. It has a superb discovery rate against all medium and high threats within its regularly updated database and is able to remove or clean any infected files or applications that it finds.

Finding Families Of Threats

As well as searching for threats that are classified as medium and high risk, the McAfee AVERT Stinger also contains details of other spyware applications within the same family. Spyware is updated regularly to counteract security measures taken by users. The more up to date a threat is the more deadly it can be, even on some protected systems. Scanning for spyware families gives comprehensive coverage of spyware that may be quickly and devastatingly updated.

Heuristic Scanning For Typical Spyware Behaviour

The Stinger, like many McAfee security applications, uses heuristic scanning as well as signature scanning. This means that it not only looks for very specific details such as process names or executable file names. The Stinger will also look at the characteristics of processes set to run on your PC. It will compare these to known actions that typify spyware processes and discover any processes, files, and applications that are seen as potential spyware.

Threat Specific Stingers

Specific threats are also counteracted by using a threat specific Stinger. These are only released when necessary, because of difficult or extremely damaging spyware threats. Downloading the Stinger is usually caused by prompting from your anti-virus application or through research of a specific threat found on an infected computer. Once installed, it will scan the desired areas of your system and remove any instances of the threat it is looking for. This makes the detection and removal of particularly difficult viruses much easier and a lot more effective.

Combining The Stinger With McAfee Anti-Virus Software

The McAfee AVERT Stinger can use the same scanning engine as the McAfee Anti-Virus application. This has two distinct advantages. The first is that if you already have McAfee software on your PC then you have everything you need to run the Stinger. The second advantage is that it uses less of your hard drive ensuring that you have use of as much of your system resource as possible.

McAfee AVERT Stinger

The Stinger is a very specific threat detection and deletion application. It is not used as a substitute for good anti-spyware software but is instead used to complement your anti-virus. It is typically used by users that are attempting to deal with a troublesome, infected system. There are two types of Stinger – the general Stinger that looks for medium and high risk threats and their families, and the threat specific Stinger released only to use in the fight against a single threat. Both have proved invaluable time and time again to those that have needed them.

McAfee AVERT Stinger Free Downloads