Antivirus scanning software, or a virus scanner, is a program which examines all files in specified locations, the contents of memory, the operating system, the registry, unexpected program behavior, Antivirus Software and anywhere else relevant with the intention of identifying and removing any malware.

Peter Tippett made a chiffre of contributions to the budding cropland of virus detection. He was an emergency-room doctor who also ran a computer specialist software company. He had read an article about the Lehigh virus and questioned whether they would have analogous characteristics to biological viruses that attack organisms. From an epidemiological viewpoint, he was able to determine how these viruses were affecting systems within the computer (the boot-sector was affected by the Brain virus, the .com files were affected by the Lehigh virus, and both .com and .exe files were affected by the Jerusalem virus). then began to create anti-virus software programs. The company was sold in 1992 to Symantec Corp, and Tippett went to work for them, incorporating the software he had developed into Symantec’s product, Norton AntiVirus.