Quarantine

The term quarantine generally relates to the mandatory isolation of a particular item. It is a form of containment to stop the spreading of possible infection. In the terms of computer language, an item that needs to be quarantined would be a suspicious file or program. Periods of quarantine vary depending on the severity of the risk it may pose. This would be the case when a joke program or false alarm is detected in a scan. A good anti-virus solution will run a thorough scan and be able to detect suspect files and those that have actually been corrupted by a virus. It may also detect those that are beyond the repair of the current virus definitions. After a scan, a user will be able to place the suspected files into quarantine folder on the hard drive of their computer. Those files can then be transmitted to a central quarantine network of the security server.