Good Bye Anti-virus Software?

How many times has it happened that despite having a really good hardware
configuration, your anti-virus software chews up all system resources, rendering
your machine completely un-responsive? Probably all the time if we consider most
commercial anti-virus software that's available today.

How many times has it happened that despite having anti-virus software, your
systems get infected? Once again, we all know that anti-virus software can't
offer 100% protection from malware. And yet, they're a necessary evil, and must
be installed on all systems.

This results in a race between the creators of malware and anti-virus
signatures. So much so, that there's a new malware being created every few
seconds. This race has now reached a level where we, the anti-virus users suffer
irrespective of who wins. If malware wins, then we lose because we're busy
cleaning up our systems. If the anti-virus wins, we still lose because we're
waiting for our applications to load because the anti-virus is hogging all the
system resources. Either way, we lose on productivity.

But thankfully, a light is now visible at the end of the tunnel, due to a new
breed of solutions that are threatening to replace anti-virus software. These
are based on white listing technology which, simply put, allows only authorized
applications to run, and stops everything else dead in its tracks, including
malware. So, no matter how innovative malware creators get, the white listing
solution will not allow their applications to run.

Anil Chopra, Editors anilc@cybermedia.co.in

It sounds like a simple solution to such a complex problem, but will it
really replace anti-virus software? Not really, because organizations can't
completely do away with AV software. The reasons for this are simple. For one,
anti-virus software has been around for too long, and organizations are
comfortable deploying and using it. Two, it would require considerable effort to
completely rip and replace it with a pure-play white listing solution. You'll
have to first track all applications across all desktops to determine which ones
to white list. This effort would grow with more desktops, and become even more
challenging in heterogeneous environments with multiple Operating Systems.
Moreover, software continues to be upgraded, patched and updated. This
non-static nature of software makes the task of white listing applications even
more difficult.

White listing vendors can't be taken for granted either, because they have
also hit the pain points of most organizations-increased pressure to comply with
regulatory policies and other compliance norms; greater control over the usage
of unauthorized software like public IMs, P2P clients, etc; prevention of
information theft and running of unlicensed software. White listing solutions
make all this possible, in addition to malware protection.

Finally, irrespective of who wins, one thing's clear. White listing vendors
have finally given a jolt to anti-virus vendors, thanks to which we're now
seeing much leaner and less resource hungry anti-virus software.