TechRepublic - IT Security: New controversy on the effectiveness of antivirus software

Patrick Lambert looks at a recent report that tested antivirus and found detection rates "abysmal." But not everyone thinks the tests were fair.

By Patrick Lambert
January 21, 2013

The debate on whether or not an antivirus solution is worth the money spent is not new. There have been surveys and studies comparing the effectiveness of the various security solutions out there for many years. The problem used to be fairly huge, because the very design of an antivirus meant that it would scan a system for potential malware it knows about, and nothing else. In the early years of these security systems, each antivirus would keep a database of known threats, and whenever a new type of malware came in, nothing could detect it, and it would then infect every system it could reach until the companies could update their virus definition databases. Now, this is less so, because of something called heuristics, where an antivirus software not only looks at malware signatures, but also behavior, and tries to detect new malware simply by what the binary file may be doing to your computer. However, the effectiveness of these new solutions is up for debate, and according to a recent study by the firm Imperva, also published in the New York Times, antivirus solutions simply do not do a good job at it.

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