AntiVirus Software: Full Virus Protection ?

What problems might the antivirus industry be facing, apart from the market headaches which plague any manufactuer of consumer goods. We all know that viruses exist, and so do antivirus solutions. It might seem that antivirus solutions are a standard consumer product - one solution barely differs from the next. Users choose their product according to design, or marketing, or for some other non-technical reason. Given this, an antivirus solution is, in theory, just another consumer product, like washing powder, toothpaste, or cars.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) this is not the case. Users often chose an antivirus solution for its technical characteristics, and these differ widely between products. Users often focus on whether or not a specific product protects against a specific type of cyber threat, and the overall level of protection offered.

An antivirus solution should be able to protect against ALL types of malicious program. The better the antivirus solution, the happier users and system administrators will be. Anyone who doesn’t understand this in theory will very soon be faced with the practical consequences; without a good antivirus solution, someone can start stealing money from the user’s bank account, or the computer may start dialing phone numbers of its own accord, leaving the user to wonder why outgoing traffic has increased so much. Given this, users should have some idea of what protection is offered by antivirus solutions, so that an informed choice can be made.

Read the detailed paper by computer virus researcher Eugene Kaspersky, the head of the Kaspersky Lab here. [via]