What is an activity monitor?
Activity monitoring software, as the name implies, oversees the operation of the computer and alerts the user when suspicious activity takes place. It may, for example, check for any calls to format a disk or attempts to alter or delete a program file while a program other than the operating system is in control. It may be more sophisticated, and check for any program that performs “direct” activities with hardware, without using the standard system calls. Although the analogy should not be stretched too far, activity monitors do share some characteristics, though not functions, of medical vaccines, being memory-resident and preventive in nature. A minor variation on activity-monitoring software is operation-restricting software. Instead of watching for suspicious activities, it automatically prevents them. The difference between a “monitor” and a “restrictor” is really only one of degree in the information given to the user. Most general microcomputer security programs use operation r
