Anti-virus products are rubbish, says Imperva

A study released in December by US security outfit Imperva has tipped a bucket on the multi-billion-dollar anti-virus industry, claiming that initial detection rates are as low as five percent, and concluding that enterprise and consumer anti-virus spend “is not proportional to its effectiveness”.

Working in conjunction with students from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, the company tested 82 malware samples against 40 anti-virus products including offerings from Microsoft, Symantec, McAfee and Kaspersky.

The test revealed that while catalogued viruses are well-detected, “less than 5% of anti-virus solutions in the study were able to initially detect previously non-cataloged viruses and that many solutions took up to a month or longer following the initial scan to update their signatures.”