Buying An Anti-Virus Is Like Paying for A Dead Horse

Some people say that anti-viruses are must-have applications because computer infections, no matter if we're talking about viruses, Trojan horses or any type of malware, have become extremely dangerous and may even damage hardware components. However, a security expert considers that buying such an application is simply wasted money because even if you choose to pay for a security product, you still get your computer infected.

According to ZDNet Australia, Cisco's chief security officer, John Stewart, explained during the AusCERT 2008 conference that there are some other security measures available that may prove to be more efficient than a traditional anti-virus.

"If patching and antivirus is where I spend my money, and I'm still getting infected and I still have to clean up computers and I still need to reload them and still have to recover the user's data and I still have to reinstall it, the entire cost equation of that is a waste," he said according to ZDNet Australia.

"It's completely wasted money. There are too many companies in the world that actually believe infection is just a cost of doing business and are getting used to doing it--as opposed to stopping it completely. That's dangerous."

Moreover, the Cisco official explained that the malware industry evolved way faster than the market on which security companies are only developing applications depending on the threats appearing on the web. And that's mostly correct because virus definitions and anti-virus updates are usually released to provide protection against the threats which already exist on the web.

Moreover, there's no way to skip this process because predicting the new types of infections prepared by virus writers is obviously impossible, so for the time being, you just have to implement the available security measures and hope you'll remain on the safe side.