Is antivirus dead? Not just yet...

Symantec has proclaimed antivirus is dead - but it wouldn't be smart to ignore signature-based anti-malware systems, one expert has said.

Symantec's head of information security, Brian Dye, told The Wall Street Journal that antivirus "is dead", since it blocks only 45% of attacks. He said his company doesn't see it as "a moneymaker in any way" - despite it contributing to 40% of its revenue.

Dye pointed to the constantly changing nature of security threats, saying that security firms need to offer much more than antivirus in order to battle hackers, especially when it comes to businesses. Symantec, for example, will be offering a response team to consultants in order to provide businesses with better intelligence.

However, Simon Edwards, the head of Dennis Technology Labs (DTL) - a security testing company affiliated with our sister magazone PC Pro's publisher - suggested that the "antivirus is dead" comments aren't wholly accurate.

He pointed out that any "decent antivirus product" will use more than malware signatures alone for protection - but that doesn't mean they're not a useful part of a security suite.

"It would be rather remiss to omit the signature system entirely (you’d risk ignoring well-known malicious files, which seems rather silly), but to rely on it is clearly a bad idea," he said in a blog post.

"In real-world tests run by DTL and other testing organisations, anti-malware products are rarely 100% effective but neither are they usually completely useless," he said. "Microsoft Security Essentials often appears to be quite weak and, in our tests, always appears at the bottom of the ratings - yet it still seems to stop more than 50% of threats."

Edwards pointed out that more robust security services - such as those Dye is pushing for Symantec - are designed for businesses, leaving consumers on "dead" antivirus.

"So anti-malware-based products are clearly one of the few options available for consumers and, as long as those products aren't entirely signature-based, they should do a reasonable job of protecting people," he said. "They will be better than nothing, at least, which does not sound like 'dead' [or] obsolete."

This article originally appeared at pcpro.co.uk