Heuristics

Heuristics means ´rule based´.  Normally, for an Anti-Virus product to detect a virus, the virus must have been seen before, analyzed and detection added to the signature update files. Heuristics Detection are used as there are some families of viruses that continually change their appearance and it is not possible to detect every variant. Heuristics allow us to set up some rules so if it smells like a virus, and it acts like a virus we can detect it, even if we have never seen the virus before.