Death of antivirus software greatly exaggerated

An executive at a company whose name is synonymous with antivirus software raised eyebrows earlier this year when he pronounced the death of that form of system protection. Nevertheless, while the effectiveness of that software may have waned over the years, security experts say the pronouncement by Symantec’s senior vice president for information security Brian Dye was premature.

Certainly the growth in sophistication of malware has made untenable the use of signature-based antivirus software as a standalone source of protection for systems. “More than half the threats we stop aren’t stopped by our AV software,” said Chandra Rangan, vice president for product marketing at Symantec.

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