An infiltration is detected
Infiltrations can reach the system from various entry points such as webpages, shared folders, via email or from removable devices (USB, external disks, CDs, DVDs, diskettes, etc.).
Standard behavior
As a general example of how infiltrations are handled by ESET Mail Security, infiltrations can be detected using:
•Real-time file system protection
Each uses the standard cleaning level and will attempt to clean the file and move it to Quarantine or terminate the connection. A notification window is displayed in the notification area at the bottom right corner of the screen. For more information about cleaning levels and behavior, see Cleaning.
Cleaning and deleting
If there is no pre-defined action to take for Real-time file system protection, you will be prompted to select an option in the alert window. Usually the options Clean, Delete and No action are available. Selecting No action is not recommended, as this will leave infected files uncleaned. The exception to this is when you are sure that a file is harmless and has been detected by mistake.
Apply cleaning if a file has been attacked by a virus that has attached malicious code to the file. If this is the case, attempt to clean the infected file to restore it to its original state before cleaning. If the file consists exclusively of malicious code, it will be deleted.
If an infected file is “locked“ or in use by a system process, it will usually only be deleted after it is released (normally after a system restart).
Multiple threats
If any infected files were not cleaned during Computer scan (or the Cleaning level was set to No Cleaning), an alert window prompting you to select actions for those files is displayed.
Select an action individually for each threat in the list or you can use Select action for all listed threats and choose one action to take on all the threats in the list, then click Finish.
Deleting files in archives
In default cleaning mode, the entire archive will only be deleted if it contains infected files and no clean files. In other words, archives are not deleted if they also contain harmless clean files.
Use caution when performing a Strict cleaning scan, with Strict cleaning enabled an archive will be deleted if it contains at least one infected file regardless of the status of other files in the archive.