360 Total Security offers a wide range of features for your PC security, and antivirus engine is one of the essential component in security suites. There are four Security Engines built-in to 360 Total Security, namely 360 Cloud Scan Engine, QVMII Al Engine, Bitdefender Engine, and Avira AntiVir Engine. These engines work in a two-step dynamic protection to prevent any suspicious program from getting access to your computer.

• Characteristic Matching a.k.a Signature Matching

Human can be uniquely identified by its fingerprint. Likewise, computer files have their unique characteristics. Security engines assess a file characteristic by querying its signature to the cloud, where it holds the intelligence to decide whether the file is Good, Malicious, or Unknown.

Traditionally, antivirus software contains a local signature database which stores virus definitions. As a result, users should keep their antivirus definitions up-to-date to protect against the everchanging threat landscape. 360 Total Security’s Cloud database reduces the gap between catching up to threat landscape and updating the virus definition database. With cloud security, computer protection becomes increasingly dynamic and persistent, as a user, you no longer need to constantly check if your virus definition is up-to-date.  

• Behavior Checking

Should the intention of the program remain unknown after the characteristic matching, there is still a complementary approach to judge if the program is suspicious. Security engines detect the behavior of the program. For instance, if the program attempts to gain administration authorization to make changes to your computer without informing you, then it will be considered suspicious. In this scenario, 360 Total Security displays a notification to warn you of the potential risk.  

During execution, security engines validate files with a known list of types of viruses and malware. Also, a behavioral-based detection is conducted for further check.

With various security engines and detection methods, 360 Total Security prevents your system from being infected by any malware actions.