Is Anti-Virus Dead?

Last week the head of information security at Symantec told The Wall Street Journal that antivirus is dead as it only blocks 45% of attacks. Even though it accounts for 40% of his company’s revenue he didn’t see it as a money maker.

So, considering Symantec are a Fortune 500 company and makers of such products as Norton Anti Virus should we heed their advice?  The short answer is no. Obviously, we are seeing more and more sophisticated attacks. Late last year we blogged about the Cyrptolocker virus, that held people’s data to ransom, as an illustration of how clever and malicious these threats had become. Therefore, to remove an anti virus from your system would be foolish.

Microsoft users will be familiar with Microsoft Security Essentials and this tends to perform worse when compared to specific anti-malware products, but even then it stops more than 50% of threats.

Whilst we would never say that anti-virus is 100% perfect whenever we undertake an audit of a new customer one of our biggest recommendations is to always ensure that they have up to date protection. Whilst it is not fool proof it does prevent a huge number of threats and therefore, it minimises the downtime caused by a malicious attack.

If you feel that your IT systems are exposed feel free to call us on 0121 285 0098 or email info@localhost to discuss how we can make your network safer.