Difference between Antivirus software and a Firewall

The main difference between antivirus software and a firewall is, the firewall is a network security system that protects the system by monitoring and preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to your network system. While antivirus protects the system from the virus attack. 

When it comes to computer security, there are two main tools that you should consider installing on your system, antivirus software, and firewalls. These two tools serve completely different purposes.

Firewalls are important for keeping external networks from accessing your system, but you also need to take steps to protect your system from threats that are already present.

The firewall scans all the incoming traffic and allows authorized users and virus-free data. A firewall is an obstacle between a trusted internal network and an untrusted external network.

Antivirus software can help by detecting, identifying, and removing malicious programs from the internet.

Antivirus

Antivirus software protects computers from viruses, spyware, malware, and other malicious programs. The goal is to prevent these threats from infecting or damaging your system.

Antivirus software scans files before they are opened or saved. If it detects something suspicious, it quarantines the file or deletes it altogether. This way, you don’t accidentally download or open a virus.

Firewall

Firewalls were originally designed to control network communications between two private networks. A firewall helps prevent unauthorized access to your network, allowing only specific types of traffic through. Firewalls are also known as network perimeter protection systems. They are considered essential tools in protecting against cyber-attacks.

Today’s firewalls are much more sophisticated than their predecessors and can be configured to block access to specific websites, ports, IP addresses, applications, services, protocols, and even entire countries.

Antivirus software vs Firewall

The difference between antivirus software and firewall is given below:

Antivirus	Firewall
Antivirus software protects computers from viruses, spyware, malware, and other malicious programs	Firewalls provide security at the network level, it protects the system or network from malicious attacks.
It just works with software.	It works with both hardware and software.
Antivirus software works by scanning your computer for infected files and programs and then removing them	Firewalls are network security systems that monitor and filter incoming and outgoing packets of data based on predetermined security rules.
Antivirus saves the system from viruses.	A firewall saves the system from all types of threats.
Programming is simple as compared to a firewall.	The programming of a firewall is complex as compared to an antivirus.
Antivirus deals with the both internal and external threats	Firewalls only deal with external threats.

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