Antivirus

[Michael "TheZorch" Haney]

Bart Silverstrim wrote:
> Because AV isn't a silver bullet. It's reactive, not proactive; there's 
> always a window of time open when a virus is created/modified/altered, 
> released, discovered, reverse engineered, a signature is created, then 
> released by the vendor, then your update time has to come up to get the 
> signature, and hopefully you weren't infected by then.
>   
That's why I really like Avast for my Windows installations.  Its 
updated several times a weeks and sometimes several times a day 
automatically.  In fact on Saturday it updated twice in the same day 
automatically.
> And since AV's don't normally get along with each other, you can't run 
> multiple engines to overlap protection.
>   
This is true.  If you run Vista and install another anti-virus program 
turn off Windows Defender and absolutely do not EVER try to run Norton 
Anti-Virus and McAfee at the same time ... bad things happen.
> And of course there's overhead in your AV's running, since they look at 
> all execution of files, along with the scheduled checks.
>   
I did some research and found that Avast has the lowest impact on your 
system resources.  Norton Anti-Virus has the highest system resource 
impact, and McAfee ... well its a P.O.S. in my humble opinion.
> And you are at the whims of what the AV vendor defines as a threat. This 
> was rehashed on Clam's mailing list, since ClamAV isn't really an AV 
> anymore as much as it is a malware scanner targeted for mail servers; 
> the team was including signatures for spoofing and phishing sites in the 
> signatures to scan for. To be fair every AV vendor pulls this now, as 
> all sorts of cookies and javascript crap pops up as a "virus" or threat.
>
> This is all assuming that the AV will work properly. I've had a number 
> of times where either the AV product implodes (Vexira liked to get stuck 
> with some updates not working properly, or we find a system that needs 
> to have the site license key updated and until then it annoys the user 
> with a stuck command prompt going haywire until we reinstall) or 
> interferes with other products (McAfee screwing up email). The only one 
> I haven't had a headache with of some sort has been AVG. But that 
> doesn't solve the other problems mentioned.
>   
I can honestly say I've had absolutely none of these problems with Avast 
at all.  I used to use AVG for Windows but had update problems.  I tried 
Avast and never looked back.  I once had McAfee ... then uninstalled it 
after about a week.
> But hey, it's status quo using a broken system model and these companies 
> profit from it, and it's another requirement when you're dealing with 
> the alternative of making users care enough to learn how to use a broken 
> system properly. Otherwise you have to wait until a system comes along 
> properly built to protect users from themselves.
I love how Avast can be setup to not only automatically download and 
install virus database updates but it can also be configured to 
automatically download and install updates to the application itself.  
The free home edition is basically fully automated as respect to 
maintenance.  You do have to turn on the option to automatically update 
the application, otherwise you'll be prompted to download an updated 
copy manually.  What I like about it the most is that Avast is also a 
malware scanner as well as a an anti-virus program. 

-- 
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
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