HELLO & WELCOME

[vinaya]

More or less firewall and antivirus seem to be doing the same work. What is the basic different between firewall and antivirus? If they are similar, in what way are they similar?

[talk2me]

Both are designed to protect your system from any outside/inside threat. A firewall's duty is to block unwanted network communications including outgoing ones. Antivirus deals with malicious programs that enter into a system and helps to eliminate them. Unscrupulous programmers always create new malicious programs or viruses. Hence regular updation is necessary for an antivirus package. Nowadays most of the antivirus programs are enabled for regular virus database updation.

[nytegeek]

They work in completely different ways and have completely different functions. A firewall aims to prevent a system intrusion from outside while antivirus software is for blocking, detecting, and removing malware on your local system.

[vinaya]

To summarize, firewall is program that prevents unwanted outside communication on the system, and antivirus is a program to stop unwanted programs attacking the system. Now I understand actual function of firewall and antivirus. Thank you @nyteegeek and @talk2me

But I still have a question, like antivirus is there anything such as updating firewall? If yes, how often?