Antivirus cannot replace sensible practices
December 19th, 2005EMail this article
Here's an interesting article on BBC News about the gap between a virus making an appearance and protection being created by the antivirus companies.
Security firm Ironport counted how long it took anti-virus firms to produce an antidote following the first appearance of a malicious program.
It found that, on average, anti-virus firms took 17 hours to respond to new threats.
Some viruses took far longer to tackle and in one case specific defences took more than three weeks to appear.
The main thing that you want to take away from this article is that having antivirus installed does not guarantee you total protection. Years ago it used to be that viruses and worms spread slowly and even though that hundreds of new viruses were released weekly, it was rare to come across one before the antivirus software had been updated. Now everything is a lot faster and the antivirus guys are the ones playing catch-up.
Be on the lookout for odd or unexpected attachments in emails and don't rely 100% on antivirus.
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