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Kaspersky is declared a US national security threat and is banned by the FCC

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Re: Kaspersky is declared a US national security threat and is banned by the FCC

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have also been amused by the number of technical people that prefer Telegram vs Whatsapp in terms of security.

I have also been amused by the number of technical people that prefer anything vs Signal in terms of security.

I've been amused by the number of technical people that prefer Signal vs just not shutting up about the messaging app they use and not pretending like they're some sort of authority on the topic instead of someone who deals with SOC2 compliance daily.

(This is actually independent of you or Signal, I just find it amusing that people throw their security brand™ behind some app and it's just them picking the one they like most of the time.)

Re: Kaspersky is declared a US national security threat and is banned by the FCC

#42

Is there any point in using antivirus these days anyway? I'm open to being wrong here, but I'm under the impression that antivirus exists only to tick boxes in outdated security compliance checklists. How big of a threat are viruses compared to, say, rogue antivirus products themselves?

It’s a thing in big orgs, where macros are enabled in excel and employees can be tricked into opening mail attachments. Windows defender should suffice, but like you said, from a compliance/insurance perspective it may me valuable to say “look, we scanned for signatures according to the latest knowledge of [insert vendor]”.

Personally I think that it’s ridiculous that these huge orgs fail to address the actual underlying issue, excel macros. But hey, it’s easier to fight the Symptome than to deal with the root cause, especially if the latter would impact established work flows god knows how far down the line.

Re: Kaspersky is declared a US national security threat and is banned by the FCC

#43

Is there any point in using antivirus these days anyway? I'm open to being wrong here, but I'm under the impression that antivirus exists only to tick boxes in outdated security compliance checklists. How big of a threat are viruses compared to, say, rogue antivirus products themselves?

I assume it is a cover your ass thing for executives to point to when malware happens on systems they are responsible for.

Re: Kaspersky is declared a US national security threat and is banned by the FCC

#44

Is there any point in using antivirus these days anyway? I'm open to being wrong here, but I'm under the impression that antivirus exists only to tick boxes in outdated security compliance checklists. How big of a threat are viruses compared to, say, rogue antivirus products themselves?

It’s a thing in big orgs, where macros are enabled in excel and employees can be tricked into opening mail attachments. Windows defender should suffice, but like you said, from a compliance/insurance perspective it may me valuable to say “look, we scanned for signatures according to the latest knowledge of [insert vendor]”. Personally I think that it’s ridiculous that these huge orgs fail to address the actual underl…

The class of risky employees should perhaps be limited to Chromebooks only.

Re: Kaspersky is declared a US national security threat and is banned by the FCC

#45

Is there any point in using antivirus these days anyway? I'm open to being wrong here, but I'm under the impression that antivirus exists only to tick boxes in outdated security compliance checklists. How big of a threat are viruses compared to, say, rogue antivirus products themselves?

While it's fairly easy to bypass them, half of the point seems to be making sure that people still NEED to put in the effort to bypass them.

Re: Kaspersky is declared a US national security threat and is banned by the FCC

#47

I spent Sunday researching alternatives, then uninstalling KIS and trying to install BitDefender. From this I conclude that the current state of AV/Security apps is dismal. Researching alternatives is difficult, it falls directly into the cesspool that is web product recommendation in 2022. Trying to weed out the garbage articles, I find a handful of apps that are consistently rated that the top. I discarded the reco…

I fully agree that the antivirus market is a cesspool, and long has been so. The upside is that Microsoft’s first-party solution is decent and ships with the OS, so you can sidestep the entire project of figuring out which third-party AVs somehow manage to do more good than harm.

I haven’t looked into AV for macOS in ages; when last I did (~5y?), Sophos (if corporate/paid) and ClamAV (fine for home use) seemed reasonably non-interfering.

Re: Kaspersky is declared a US national security threat and is banned by the FCC

#48

Is there any point in using antivirus these days anyway? I'm open to being wrong here, but I'm under the impression that antivirus exists only to tick boxes in outdated security compliance checklists. How big of a threat are viruses compared to, say, rogue antivirus products themselves?

> rogue antivirus products themselves?

It's not just rogue AV software. Buggy, insecure AVs are a big problem too. They're attack surface! Especially when running parsers and interpreters for untrusted inputs in kernel space.

Re: Kaspersky is declared a US national security threat and is banned by the FCC

#49

I spent Sunday researching alternatives, then uninstalling KIS and trying to install BitDefender. From this I conclude that the current state of AV/Security apps is dismal. Researching alternatives is difficult, it falls directly into the cesspool that is web product recommendation in 2022. Trying to weed out the garbage articles, I find a handful of apps that are consistently rated that the top. I discarded the reco…

Did you take a look at ESET?

Re: Kaspersky is declared a US national security threat and is banned by the FCC

#50

I spent Sunday researching alternatives, then uninstalling KIS and trying to install BitDefender. From this I conclude that the current state of AV/Security apps is dismal. Researching alternatives is difficult, it falls directly into the cesspool that is web product recommendation in 2022. Trying to weed out the garbage articles, I find a handful of apps that are consistently rated that the top. I discarded the reco…

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