Do we need AV solutions in 2008? Its like the Measles

One of the European members of the Security Bloggers Network is Kai Roer. Kai asks in his blog "Do we really need Anti-virus in 2008". Kai says that it has been some time since we have had a good old fashioned virus outbreak like a Blaster. He also says,

Have the virus authors started to write smaller virus that stays below the radar - and thus are not detected by the AV-products? Are they now only targeting special targets - like particular banks, SCADA or singled out corporations? Or countries and causes? Or are they too busy writing malware to care about virus?

My answer is a resounding yes! Of course we still need AV.  But we don't need the AV of 2001, we need the AV of 2008 and beyond.  To me this argument of whether or not we need AV is like the recent controversy we had about should we continue to vaccinate children against many childhood diseases. As soon as the vaccinations stopped, the diseases came back.  The same is true with AV.  There is still plenty of older virus attacks out there that would infect our machines and networks pretty quickly without AV.  Also, without AV how long would it be until malware writers found that it was easy again to get a Blaster type of virus or worm going.  It would be just a matter of time.

Finally lets not forget that today's AV products are combined with anti-spyware and anti-malware products to form harder lines of defense than we have had in the past.  Abandoning them now would be like spinning down the armed forces after the war is over.  It just makes you unprepared for the next one.  When it comes to viruses, ever vigilant has to be a way of life!

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