Trend Micro: Don’t buy antivirus software
- 01 October, 2008 13:02
- Comments (1)
Trend Micro’s consumer security product manager has recommend people not to buy antivirus products, including his own. But there is a method to his madness, he assures.
David Peterson, consumer segment director for Trend Micro’s ANZ business, said only a handful of the top 10 security threats these days are viruses, with downloaders, Trojans, keyloggers and phishing scams filling up the list.
As such, he believes standalone AV software is best suited for infrequent users of the internet such as dial up users, or those who want protection from nasties on USB keys.
“There is a niche for it but there are also people outside that niche who are buying it.”
He said standalone AV products are there because the market demands it. “I wish they wouldn’t. I don’t recommend buying antivirus products,” he said, referring to Trend Micro’s and its competitor’s products.
What is important is complete protection. “You are better off get Internet security suites,” he said.
Peterson has support.
“Trend is correct,” said Neil MacDonald, vice president and Gartner Fellow.
“Standalone AV is no longer sufficient for protecting endpoints; however, this does not mean that signature-based mechanisms don’t provide value. They just don’t provide the value they used to and the vendors haven’t adjusted pricing models to reflect the diminished effectiveness of standalone AV,” he said.
“The ideal endpoint security product is an endpoint security platform that provides organizations with a variety of styles of protection for endpoints – firewalls, AV, anti-spyware, application control, device control, behavioral monitoring and so on. This enables organizations to pick and choose the styles of protection appropriate to the endpoint – which will likely be different combination for desktops, laptops and servers. Even among severs this will vary by role. “AV is just component of the endpoint security platform.”
Trend Micro joins a swag of security companies to release security suites this month. It’s claims Trend Micro PC-cillin Internet Security Pro 2009 is significantly faster than last year’s effort. Others released in September include BitDefender Total Security 2009 and BullGuard Internet Security 8.5.
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Comments
lloyd_borrett
Anyone seen a "standalone anti-virus" solution lately?
Interesting that David Peterson from Trend Micro criticised companies for selling "standalone anti-virus" applications. Has he tried to buy a standalone anti-virus application recently?
Almost all entry-level, commercial "Anti-Virus" products on the market today, including those from AVG and Trend Micro, are not standalone anti-virus solutions. They also provide protection against spyware, adware, rootkits, worms, Trojans etc.
The security market convention is that entry-level products are labelled as "Anti-Virus" and full suite solutions as "Internet Security". But the entry-level commercial "Anti-Virus" products of today provide much more comprehensive protection than the simple "standalone antivirus" solutions of yesteryear. It would seem David is confusing accepted marketplace product naming with actual product functionality.
Indeed, even most free, basic-level "Anti-Virus" products, like AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 8.0, today include both anti-virus and anti-spyware protection. It's actually quite difficult to find a "standalone anti-virus" product anywhere today.
Besides, anti-virus protection is still important. At AVG, our Research Lab is processing 25-40 thousand unique files per day and adding them to our protection regime. We can not only cope with it, but we can still deliver to our customers a protection solution that is fast, yet light on system resources. Anyone choosing to turn off their anti-virus protection and stop receiving the definition updates we push out multiple times a day would soon be in serious trouble.
Were Neil MacDonald from Gartner to look more closely at security product trends and pricing, he would find that many security vendors have adjusted their pricing model. At AVG our basic-level protection is available for free. Our entry-level commercial "Anti-Virus" product today provides better protection than our full suite protection of old, but at the same entry-level price point of old.
AVG has significantly improved the value provided by our products, which is maybe why more and more people are switching to AVG security solutions. Indeed in the Australian marketplace a survey earlier in 2008 showed that 30% of households were using an AVG solution.
Yes, many security companies have just released new versions. Yet only AVG with its LinkScanner technology provides real-time protection against the fastest growing security problem – web threats.
In July 2008, the risk of exposure to web-based malware had increased by 443% compared to May 2008 and by 1636% compared to May 2007 (Source ScanSafe STAT).
Many security vendors have included safe surf and search capabilities into their new products, but almost all are blacklist and/or whitelist based, which are simply not effective against transient web threats.
When the threat is so transient that it's only active for days, no blacklist or whitelist based solution is ever going to be up-to-date enough.
Only real-time checking of web threats, as provided by the AVG LinkScanner safe surf technology included in all commercial AVG products, truly protects. AVG LinkScanner checks the web page for threats at the time it really matters - when the user clicks on the link.
Best Regards, Lloyd Borrett
Marketing Manager, AVG (AU/NZ)
http://www.avg.com.au
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