"For at least a decade, the standard advice to every computer user has been to run antivirus software. But new, more commercial, more complex and stealthier types of malware have people in the industry asking: will antivirus software be effective for much longer? Among the threats they see are malware that uses the ability of the latest processors to run virtual machines that would be hidden from antivirus programs." Note: Please note that our icon contest is still running! So if you have an idea on how to rework this story's icon, read this.
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Member since:2006-10-25
I am absolutely not advocating that people run Windows without anti-virus. That is just as naive as opening dancingbunnys.exe despite the 3 warning dialogs. In fact, I think Windows users should use updated Anti-Virus, updated Anti-Spyware, Updated Anti-Rootkit, and anything else they can.
Anyone who has ever been in a serious security discussion with a number of people will hear that group of people "I don't run anti-virus and I haven't caught any viruses!”
End users are naive; these “no anti-virus” groups of people are morons.
My point was that if you are not running Windows, then running antivirus is not necessary. All other operating systems have secure defaults and secure design, making anti-virus irrelevant. Note that these other OS's may also have optional security systems (AppArmor, SELinux, etc) that go above and beyond the OS defaults to protect further.
Windows Vista is much more secure than XP by emulating only a small fraction of these security measures that have proven effective and remained effective for decades (assuming they aren't disabled for their annoyance of poor implementation).
But in terms of security, Vista is to XP what Linux is to Vista.
We have to wait another 6 years until 2013 before we see a real secure OS from Micorsoft?
With that sad fact in mind, you are right on all counts. Viruses will continue to thrive for a long time, and reactive, barely effective, costly, 3rd party protective measures will consolidate threat detections.
And yes, ant-virus will still be necessary, and just as ineffective, or worse, than they are today.
Member since:
2005-12-15
I think there's a lot of truth in what you're saying, but at the same time I think your point on users' stupidity will render anti-virus software a 'must have' simply because they don't know any better.
Further, it's that same stupidity that would make us techies look like morons if we convinced ourselves that the people we support don't need anti-virus, until the day it hits the organisation badly and we have to face up to the reality that it doesn't matter what level of user education we are dealing with, we're all humans and we make mistakes. One mistake can be extremely costly.
Add to that the fear campaigns of anti-virus vendors and I just don't see the end of anti-virus software.
I do however see an increased amalgamation of anti-virus, anti-malware, anti-spyware packages. I think it will come to a point where pure anti-virus software will become obsolete if it doesn't also support protection of the above said.