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Good Bye Anti-virus Software?

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

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.

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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.

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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.

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