Latest Anti-Viruses Fail to Protect PCs from Malware

Computer users in general consider it essential to deploy anti-virus software for safeguarding their systems from Trojans, viruses and other malicious programs. But, according to a malware scanning services provider SurfRight, these anti-virus software often fail to provide the appropriate security or inform the malware scanner's operator about an infection on the system.

As per the statistics, SurfRight showed that about 25,000 of 78,800 PCs having up-to-date anti-virus program, contained some sort of malware when the users scrutinized their computers with SurfRight's scan.

The company, for its analysis, used 107,435 users' computers. These were put through the SurfRight online scanner during October 10 - December 4, 2009. The analysis found that nearly 28,608 of the computers were either without a scanner, or ran an expired security program.

It was also found that during the 55-days period (Oct10-Dec 4, 2009), a majority of the computers (34,845) that SurfRight scanned was infected by Generic malware. Generic malware means a collection of different malicious software rather than a specific malware.

The second infection which affected most computers over the same time-interval was found to be FAKEAV, which compromised 13,050 computers. FAKEAV refers to rogue anti-virus software or bogus anti-spyware software.

Security experts commented that the exercise illustrated as to how contradictory the promise is made by the product promotional divisions of companies selling security software. The exercise clearly shows that there is no guarantee that executing an updated anti-virus program on a computer would remove malware.
However, experts stated that the statistics obviously didn't mean that all online operators experienced the problem. People particularly use virus-scanners when they think their computer is unstable, or not running at the normal speed, or suspect a Trojan or viral infection. Actually, the total number of contaminated PCs on average isn't that high.

However, the bottom line is that even the latest anti-virus programs aren't necessarily enough to protect computers from malicious software. Therefore, users are recommended to deploy multiple layers of protection including an anti-spam filter, a firewall that's enabled on their PC/router, while ensuring that their browser is up-to-date.

Related article: Latest Scam - Emails Threatening Death to Recipients

» SPAMfighter News - 2/15/2010