Is Your Anti-virus Worth Paying For?
A new study carried out by Imperva, a data security firm and students from the Technion-Israel Institute, where researchers collected and analyzed 82 new computer viruses and put them up against more than 40 anti-virus products, made by top companies like Microsoft, Symantec, McAfee and Kaspersky Lab, found that the initial detection rate was less than 5 per cent.
So on average we can say that the antivirus software took a month to update themselves to fight the threat. There are number of free security software available, like Avasta, Emsisoft; users are encouraged to pay for additional features, and there is Microsoft Security Essentials, completely free. But nevertheless, consumers and businesses spent a combined $7.4 billion on anti-virus software last year - nearly half of the $17.7 billion spent on security software in 2011, according to Gartner.
The very infamous malware “Flame” was discovered by researchers at Kaspersky Lab. It was a complex piece of malware that had been stealing data from computers for an estimated five years. This malware gave a tough time to antivirus companies before they could actually break it.
The whole antivirus industry has stirred up and is now working on new ways to tackle the menace. Symantec and McAfee, anti-virus product manufactures, have begun to acknowledge their limitations and to try new approaches.
Symantec’s director of security Kevin Haley said "Nobody is saying anti-virus is enough." He said the company’s anti-virus products included a handful of new technologies, like behavior-based blocking, which looks at some 30 characteristics of a file, including when it was created and where else it has been installed, before allowing it to run. "In over two-thirds of cases, malware is detected by one of these other technologies," he said.
