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Even if you have a security suite installed and have kept it bang up-to-date, it still isn't easy to tell if it's working properly. Self-testing here is actually a lot more straightforward than you might think. There's no need to start visiting the underbelly of the internet in order to find "live" virus files to squirt at your system. That would be foolhardy, dangerous and 100% not recommended by PC Pro or any other authority that's serious about system security. The only people who should play around with live virus files are security vendor research labs and antivirus application reviewers, both under strictly controlled conditions.

Instead, the first port of call - as recommended by Thomas Parson, manager of product development Symantec - should be EICAR (www.eicar.org/anti_virus_test_file.htm). This is the home of the industry-standard safe antivirus scanner-testing file, a dummy all antivirus scanners should be able to detect and treat as a real virus threat. If your antivirus solution doesn't kick in when you attempt to download this then something has gone very wrong indeed, and it's time to consider reinstalling or replacing your security software.

Safa reminds us that there are also a number of more proactive testing programs available, such as Spycar (www.spycar.org), which simulates spyware attacks and will score your security performance

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under perfectly safe conditions. The Spycar suite of tools mimics spyware behaviour in a benign format, but only works under the Windows OS because that's the platform most targeted by spyware developers.

There are also a number of free web-based antivirus scanners that are made available by assorted security vendors, and can be used to double-check the strength of the protection you have installed. If they find undesirables that your installed scanner has missed, perhaps you need to be asking the developer why. Try any of the following:

http://housecall.trendmicro.com

www.kaspersky.com/virusscanner

www.bitdefender.com/scan8/ie.html

www.pandasecurity.com/homeusers/solutions/activescan

http://us.mcafee.com/root/mfs

http://onecare.live.com/site/en-US/default.htm

http://pestpatrol.com/pestscan/index.htm

http://support.f-secure.com/enu/home/ols.shtml

To scan a single suspicious file against all major AV engines, upload it to www.virustotal.com. King recommends Norman SandBox (www.norman.com/microsites/nsic) for "finding out what kind of malicious behaviour a program may be up to, such as connecting to IRC, installing a driver, and so on. This is very useful for researchers and techies".