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Behavioral malware detection brings to the spotlight components that act suspiciously on your computer. Abnormal events such as the attempt to modify files or send data across the Internet without prior authorization are some examples of what a behavioral detection antivirus might warn you about.

One example of such an antivirus program is Real Protect, a simple McAfee-signed tool that actively monitors your operating system starting from the boot time to identify odd behavior and events that seem out of the ordinary.

You should know from the beginning that Real Protect encompasses the behavioral detection engine of McAfee Stinger and therefore, it is included in the latter. As such, if you are already using Stinger, you don't need the standalone version of Real Protect to secure your PC.

Unlike Stinger,  Real Protect is not a full-featured antivirus solution, but a security tool that focuses on behavioral detection only. As such, it can only identify suspicious activity that might end up being a potentially dangerous file or a malware component.

As previously mentioned, Real Protect starts monitoring at boot, collecting various information about the files that are executed on the local computer, such as the file's name, its location, the process ID, the OS version, and the workstation's GUID.

When an event is considered suspicious by Real Protect, you are prompted for action. You have approximately five minutes at your disposal to decide whether to ignore the warning or send the file to quarantine. Otherwise, Real Protect will choose to dismiss the message and take no action.

As a behavioral analysis tool, Real Protect can become a police officer for your computer, watching over to identify suspicious behavior. However, those of you who are relying on Stinger to monitor the PC and remove malicious files benefit from the same behavioral engine that empowers Real Protect, so you don't need to download it separately. Nevertheless, if you decide to give it a try and see what it's all about, note that McAfee does not offer support for the standalone edition of Real Protect.