Antivirus Subscription Inflation - ' Virus Subscription Inflation ' (
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If you do have a networked environment, then you might be wise to get network-based protection. Most professional network-based antivirus systems and firewalls are very expensive, since they are aimed at large businesses, and everyone seems to agree that businesses should pay more. (Why? I dont know) I use WinProxy from Ositis Software. Its a firewall and network-based antivirus engine in one. Users can get content filtering for a pricier subscription; and (as the name implies) its a proxy server.
One reason Im a paying customer is that its the only product Ive found that offers affordable network-based protection for both. I also like the fact that the company doesnt hide its subscription costs, and why should it? At $10 per user per year, its a comparative bargain, and you can cut that to $8 per year by signing up for two years. Unfortunately, Ositis recently switched from using Trends scanner to Pandas, and it hasnt been the same. For the two or three years I used Trend, there were at most two viruses that got through Winproxy to my desktop scanners, but Ive had many since the move to Panda.
Finally, as I predicted prematurely many years ago, some ISPs are beginning to offer antivirus protection on the entire connection. My own ISP, Speakeasy.Net, offers antivirus and spam filtering using AmikaGuardian, which actually uses the Command Software scanner. In theory this is the best way to protect most users, since almost all infections happen through the Internet connection, and its easier to keep a relatively small number of ISPs up-to-date than millions of users. But so far my results with AmikaGuardian have been dreadful: Since June 1, it has reported fewer than 10 viruses to me, and more than 100 have been trapped by my network and antivirus scanners. I couldnt recommend anyone rely on this protection.
Best practices would indicate that even if you have network- or ISP-based protection, you still should run a desktop scanner, both because something could get through the first line of defense and because you should have some redundancy. This can be a serious matter, since even some very old viruses (such as Funlove) continue to spread because they use network shares to propagate. Once a client becomes infected—perhaps with a CD brought from home or a notebook taken on the road—its a ticking timebomb. If you run both, you should get them from different vendors. This is a great technical solution, but it doesnt solve the problem of the guy whos paying too much; it just makes matters worse.
The real solution is that personal-security software vendors need to start giving price breaks for even small volumes. Now that they will be including DRM, as I assume all the major vendors will follow Symantecs lead eventually, sticking with their current pricing scheme is sticking it to the customer.
Security Supersite Editor Larry Seltzer has worked in and written about the computer industry since 1983.
