Not "could". Does.
Do you think that AV, on net, makes you less secure? If so, can you provide any data?
Antivirus software could make your company more vulnerable
21–30 of 48 posts
Re: Antivirus software could make your company more vulnerable
#22I avoided AV software for most of my life. Though, when I worked as a student admin, I would always install AV for the majority of my users. Most users (especially older) simply could never learn not to download that cool new 'freeware' app or game or not double click a downloaded exe (the fact that hidden extensions are still the default on Windows OS is absurd). As a more savvy user, I did not desire the typical AV…
>> I'm not sure the AVs have helped much, but they give some sort of psychological benefit, at least. I find this a very dangerous way of thinking. You use the placebo (well, not even a placebo, just useless) and then you stop worrying that much about opening downloaded files, checking their hash if you trust the source, visiting dodgy websites... An analogy taken to the extreme, would be to smoke and binge drinking…
Not necessarily! It depends! It could be that the constant popups about updating the AV, about allowing access to trusted programs etc. constantly reminds him of the aspect of security and has this aspect in the back of his mind while browsing, so it may actually enhance security awareness. As in "I'm the sort of person who cares a lot about viruses, so much that I have an AV and adblocker etc., so I'm also the kind of person who doesn't just install any crap."
Installing an AV doesn't automatically reduce your defenses. Only if you over-trust it.
Re: Antivirus software could make your company more vulnerable
#23Not "could". Does.
Do you think that AV, on net, makes you less secure? If so, can you provide any data?
Yes, I do. AV is hairy systems code that hooks the OS in a bunch of places, and IT managers demand that it be very manageable, so it tends to have remote management and reporting UIs.
The long and nasty history of RCE flaws, not just horrible stuff like this but subtler stuff buried in the file format parsers, is all the data I feel like I need.
Re: Antivirus software could make your company more vulnerable
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> the fact that hidden extensions are still the default on Windows OS is absurd Is this the case for Apple's OS well (Yosemite or whatever its called nowadays)?
OS X is a UNIX, so file extensions don't matter a whole lot. You can double click a plain Mach-O executable file and it'll run it in a Terminal window. For application bundles (folder with name ending in .app), OS X will warn you if the file was downloaded/not signed by a key trusted by Apple.
While it's true that they don't have meaning to the lower levels of the system, file extensions matter a whole lot to the higher-level frameworks and the GUI that ordinary people use.
Re: Antivirus software could make your company more vulnerable
#25I avoided AV software for most of my life. Though, when I worked as a student admin, I would always install AV for the majority of my users. Most users (especially older) simply could never learn not to download that cool new 'freeware' app or game or not double click a downloaded exe (the fact that hidden extensions are still the default on Windows OS is absurd). As a more savvy user, I did not desire the typical AV…
You could always slap Linux on a USB thumb drive and not worry about malware while you browse the net.
Re: Antivirus software could make your company more vulnerable
#26I avoided AV software for most of my life. Though, when I worked as a student admin, I would always install AV for the majority of my users. Most users (especially older) simply could never learn not to download that cool new 'freeware' app or game or not double click a downloaded exe (the fact that hidden extensions are still the default on Windows OS is absurd). As a more savvy user, I did not desire the typical AV…
I used to use commercial antivirus products like McAfee and Norton and Trend Micro etc. I went with Avast Home for free. I scan with Emisoft Emergency Kit because it can fit on a USB drive and be portable. No matter what you do eventually you will get infected by some exploit. Be it Flash, Java, some pop-up ad, or just an email sent to your email client that exploits it. I got a lawyer still runs XP and Vista and use…
> I got a lawyer still runs XP and Vista and uses ClamAV because it is free. I worry that her systems might be infected, but her husband runs the tech support for their firm.
Scary. Small law firms are a prime target for cryptolocker-type attacks. In that case you need a solid backup / restore system.
Re: Antivirus software could make your company more vulnerable
#27I avoided AV software for most of my life. Though, when I worked as a student admin, I would always install AV for the majority of my users. Most users (especially older) simply could never learn not to download that cool new 'freeware' app or game or not double click a downloaded exe (the fact that hidden extensions are still the default on Windows OS is absurd). As a more savvy user, I did not desire the typical AV…
> using a primitive console based browser
Be careful which you choose. Some of them are extremely primitive compared to the major GUI browsers. For example, I was shocked to learn recently that there is no upstream for w3m, and that w3m doesn't do SSL out-of-the-box. And yet, w3m is used to render HTML by all sorts of other console-based applications.
Re: Antivirus software could make your company more vulnerable
#28Not "could". Does.
Do you think that AV, on net, makes you less secure? If so, can you provide any data?
This[1] is on the very top of the fronpage right now. TrendMicro has a daemon listening on localhost that can execute arbitary commands.
Re: Antivirus software could make your company more vulnerable
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to use commercial antivirus products like McAfee and Norton and Trend Micro etc. I went with Avast Home for free. I scan with Emisoft Emergency Kit because it can fit on a USB drive and be portable. No matter what you do eventually you will get infected by some exploit. Be it Flash, Java, some pop-up ad, or just an email sent to your email client that exploits it. I got a lawyer still runs XP and Vista and use…
> I got a lawyer still runs XP and Vista and uses ClamAV because it is free. I worry that her systems might be infected, but her husband runs the tech support for their firm. Scary. Small law firms are a prime target for cryptolocker-type attacks. In that case you need a solid backup / restore system.
At first my lawyer offered me a job to help with computers. But later said no because her husband takes care of the computers and has to do it a certain way.
I don't know how they are set up for backups. I only know they use XP and Vista and ClamAV looking at their desktops.
Re: Antivirus software could make your company more vulnerable
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another NoScript user here and the web is better because of this addon. It's amazing the quantity of websites that auto-play their videos, just by blocking those scripts alone NoScript has helped my blood pressure immensely.
I found that NoScript required too much customisation for each site I visited - do you have some kind of default ruleset that makes this easier?
Rule #1: Abandon any site so crappy that it can't be made to work after enabling 3 scripts.