Almost everyday we read reports about companies being infiltrated and end users being infected while being “protected” by Antivirus products.
Its time to own up and tell the world that running Traditional AntiVirus is no longer enough to protect you. I call upon the AntiVirus industry to STOP spreading statements like “antivirus protection that stops viruses and spyware, so you can safely go online and share”.
Its your responsibility to inform the end users about both capability and limitations of your products. Anti Virus products work with “default allow” architecture. They try to find if a file is bad or not, if they cannot ascertain, then they say its ok to run the file. Based on that one cannot make a statement that they will stop viruses, because you have no way of knowing all the viruses to stop them. So why make this statement? This gives false sense of security.
When the first Antivirus was invented, it was invented to “remove/clean” an existing infection. It was never promoted as a “protection”. This I believe was around late 1980s…. So what happened between then and now for the AntiVirus vendors to start claiming that these kind of Antivirus products can “protect” you? These Antivirus products can ONLY stop a malware if and ONLY IF they know about it. How about the countless number of unknown malware that they do not know!!!
Its time to be honest with consumers and give them the information they deserve. Its time to own up and tell them these traditional Anti Virus products cannot protect them from malware they don’t know. End users deserve to know the truth!