OK, ZDNet, lay it on us.
Antivirus applications from Symantec, McAfee or Trend Micro — the three leading AV vendors in 2005 — are far less likely to detect new viruses and Trojans than the least popular brands.
I’m with you so far. I hate Symantec and McAfee as a matter of principle: even if their detection rates were decent, I can’t tolerate their horrible bloatware.
Oh, you weren’t done?
This has nothing to do with the quality of the software or how long it takes the respective firms to update their clients with signatures and other malware countermeasures.
Oh.
However, the actual reason why the top selling antivirus applications don’t work is because malware authors are specifically testing their Trojans and viruses to make sure they can bypass these applications before releasing them in the wild.
While there may be some validity to this, it’s mostly the old canard that less popular software suffers less than popular software—you know, the tripe usually used to discredit the inherent security of Linux as opposed to Windows.
The truth of the matter is that even if a particular piece of malware was written to bypass the top three antivirus programs, the companies should still be able to push out updates quickly and effectively. Grisoft sometimes sends definition updates out several times a day; Symantec sometimes goes as long as four days without an update. You tell me which one I’d rather have on my machine.
NOD32 NOD32 NOD32!
Amen, brother.