The Anti-Virus Industry has a Dirty Little Secret

The bad guys are always trying to be a step ahead of the anti-virus programs, and it doesn’t take a lot to be a step ahead. Criminals have discovered that malicious software can be very profitable. Viruses are tools they use to siphon out company trade secrets, control large botnets, and empty consumer bank accounts. The number of new viruses has grown exponentially. In the year 2000 there were fewer than 1 million strains of malware, and by 2010 there were more than 49 million strains.

The truth is that Symantec, McAfee, and other anti-virus software products are not very good at stopping computer viruses, especially fresh new ones. We’ve seen this problem many times in our computer repair shop. One of our most common service requests is for virus removal and the users are often frustrated because they expected their anti-virus program to do a better job.

A recent front page article in The Oregonian found that the initial detection rate of new viruses is less than 5%. On average, it takes almost a month for ant-virus programs to update their detection mechanisms and spot the new viruses. Virus creators simply move too quickly for anti-virus programs to keep up!

Anti-virus companies have begun to acknowledge their limitations in stopping these viruses in time. That is why, if you go to Symantec or McAfee websites, you will have a hard time finding the word “anti-virus” on their home page.

Since the traditional methods of detection and protection are not keeping up, the industry is trying new approaches such as whitelisting (allowing only traffic that the system knows is safe) or sandboxing (isolating an application in a virtual container until it is deemed safe to be let loose). We’ve seen these new approaches in action, we’ve used them ourselves and have found them to be very effective, although not very user friendly.

We can only hope that anti-virus companies become better at protecting us and operating system vendors improve on their built-in security in the years to come.

In the meantime, what can you do to protect yourself? Here are a few pointers:

• Protect your search results with Web Of Trust or McAfee SiteAdvisor
• Try a sandboxing program such as SandboxIE
• Be suspicious of all e-mail attachments
• Be extremely cautions of links in e-mails and IM messages
• Read all unexpected messages and dialog boxes
• Be wary of security warnings that ask you to download or buy software
• Don’t believe everything you see, such as a fake scan of your computer
• Think twice before installing software from unknown companies
• Don’t trust messages coming from social networking sites (Facebook or Twitter)
• Avoid using add-on toolbars in your web browser
• Say NO to junkware, avoid installing free smileys, cursors, wallpapers, or screensavers
• Be careful of P2P file sharing networks, don’t risk downloading illegal music and videos
• Use common sense on the internet, don’t rely on your anti-virus to protect you

If you’d like a FEE compete guide on How to Avoid Spyware and Viruses please email us at info@teknyka.com and we’ll gladly send it to you!