Damballa Shows Failure of Most Anti-Viruses in Detecting Malware

Damballa the security company in its new "Q4 2014 State of Infections Report" says that anti-virus software can't detect 70% of contaminations from malicious software during one hour since attack. Moreover, they correctly identify just 66% of tell-tale signs of malicious software following repeat scan during 24 hours since contamination, while the figure increases to 72% during 7 days since attack. The anti-virus (AV) solutions take over 6 months for developing signatures for all malware, the security company indicates.

Brian Foster Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Damballa stated that his firm wouldn't openly mention the anti-virus agencies' names whose techniques Damballa put to test, however, he additionally stated that people popularly knew the agencies as they commonly provided anti-virus programs. Eweek.com reported this in news on February 12, 2015.

Foster further added that the tests were done without the intention to state the products' degree of efficiency in general.

According to him, the tests were conducted for proving that anti-viruses weren't essentially too good for thwarting sophisticated malware that were created for being evasive. Anti-viruses usually worked after observing any malware in action, implying that in case an end-user became contaminated while not on the network followed with getting re-connected, it might not be possible to always stop the infection.

Elsewhere Foster stated that the analysis clearly suggested focusing on the 'lingering period' of an infection. Anti-virus solutions solely worked on a few of the computers and only sometimes. The PC-viruses got merged together and then mutated while fresh viruses could emerge during the period required for dealing with any malware that got commonly detected, Foster explained. Businesswire.com reported this in news on February 12, 2015.

The CTO indicated that safeguard programs as themselves didn't provide businesses sufficient protection that encountered sophisticated malware contaminations.

He stated that attackers could combine malicious codes whenever they wished, but organizations had limited staff for tackling security alerts that got profusely generated. Damballa therefore advised organizations towards adopting one new breach-readiness system that lessened reliance on manpower as also long tested safeguard tools, Foster emphasized. Computerweekly.com reported this in news on February 12, 2015.

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