M86 Security claims that anti-virus misses about 60 percent of malware

Claims by anti-virus vendors that they block 99 percent of malware is chaff, according to a security chief.

John Vigouroux, the chief executive officer of web gateway company M86 Security, said anti-virus vendors claim to block 99 percent of known malware, but most criminals use unknown variants. Vigouroux said that the security industry has "done a miserable job of protecting customers and industry".

“Most of the web is legitimate and while 40 per cent gets blocked, 60 per cent gets through. Every single product on the market is running off the same database idea and to make a database up you need to find the malware to write signatures to match the code to the database in order to block it. “I do not care how fast they can update, it is so simple that it is scary, but it is easy to do as the attackers keep coming with new malware and the industry is doing a terrible job of keeping up.”