Symantec calls antivirus "doomed"

[ZortMcGort11]

Here's another ZDNet article:

http://www.zdnet.com/antivirus-is-dead-long-live-the-antivirus-7000029078/

Symantec calls antivirus 'doomed' as security giants fight for survival

Summary: The traditional antivirus is "dead" and "doomed to failure," Symantec's information security chief declares. Quelle surprise, considering Norton is fading into oblivion. But what next?

Antivirus products are "doomed to failure," according to Brian Dye, senior vice president for information security at Symantec, a security firm and maker of antivirus products.

From The Wall Street Journal on Sunday, the antivirus giant said that end-point security technology isn't a "moneymaker" in any way, and highlighted that the company needs to adjust and adapt.

Which isn't a surprise for Symantec, whose Norton antivirus products have barely made any new dents in the security market in years - despite it being bundled with almost every new Windows computer as premium bloatware.

But what Dye was saying is that the malware market is dwindling and hackers are instead increasingly focusing on cyberattacks, like denial-of-service assaults, spearphishing, and network intrusion, rather than mass-emailing a crafted executable file randomly to millions - including to a burgeoining base of Mac users that are immune to such attacks.

Antivirus products are catching less than half of all cyberattacks, Dye said, which puts his company between a rock and a hard place. Not least because antivirus products still make up about 40 percent of the company's revenue as of its fiscal third quarter earnings. And its cybersecurity systems it sells to big businesses and enterprises makes up half of that revenue, but comes with narrower profit margins.

Symantec began to mix things up and push beyond the traditional end-point security model back when it had the chance.

But so have others.

In recent months, in partnership with Symantec, IBM announced a new cybersecurity offering to protect networks and critical data from zero-day attacks, by detecting irregular patterns in network traffic.

Meanwhile, Juniper announced earlier this year its expansion of its Firefly suite of products, which aims to bulk up business firewalls and the wider network perimeters. The company is also gunning to put "fake" data within internal networks in efforts to distract hackers from the real corporate goods.

Cisco is also pushing harder on its enterprise solutions in order to prove that the outer edges of the network is just as important as the desktop end-point services.

It's clear that the traditional desktop-running antivirus market isn't floating anybody's boat anymore. It's not the be-all and end-all, but it's hard to see any major antivirus company ditching its end-user services any time soon.

Though the company won't retire its Norton suite in favor of larger projects, it's looking ahead to other areas in order to find its place in the ever-evolving security market.

The Journal's report points to Symantec joining the data breach aftermath party later this week by creating its own response team to hacked businesses. After its initial launch, the company aims to help plug the holes in enterprise systems by selling intelligence reports in order to educate businesses on how and why they are suffering breaches.

It's a hole in the market that some firms are hiring and acquiring in order to fill — the niche sector of the market that goes after the attackers rather than just protecting against intrusions and breaches in the first place.

Other companies are also fighting to remain relevant to big businesses, where profits are higher and contracts can be lucrative.

FireEye, for instance, bought Mandiant for $1 billion in January in efforts to bolster its response efforts. The company's chief executive David DeWalt said one of the reasons behind snapping up the firm was to receive the first call companies make after an attack.

The company came to prominence after it emerged it alerted Target to suspicious activity, something the company decided to ignore.

"If customers are shifting from protect to detect and respond, the growth is going to come from detect and respond," Dye told the Journal.

Antivirus products might be doomed, but if it can maintain that edge over its counterparts and rivals, it might just have that 60 percent revenue slice nailed down in a year or two.

Edited May 5, 2014 by LostInSpace2012

[JorgeA]

I guess that helps to explain why Norton and so many other AV vendors have been branching out into other services like cloud storage and PC maintenance.

 

--JorgeA

[Flasche]

Meh  never liked Symantec. Seems to me that they are crying because they failed to realize, that no one likes bloat-ware. Reminds me of M$ alot.

[ZortMcGort11]

I remeber when my computer got infected with the NYB boot sector virus back in the nineties. It got implanted by an infected floppy disk I accidently left in the machine when turning it on. Thankfully F-prot for DOS was able to repair it. And besides a macro virus or two from microsoft word documents, I haven't detected anything since.

It seemed in the early 2000's that anti-virus programs gave way to spyware and adware scanners. I don't know if this was hype, or if it was really that serious.

But it seemed that using Firefox was all that was needed to prevent "adware." The adware and spyware seemed synonomous with Internet Explorer.

Edited May 6, 2014 by LostInSpace2012

[ZortMcGort11]

Meh never liked Symantec. Seems to me that they are crying because they failed to realize, that no one likes bloat-ware. Reminds me of M$ alot.

Yeah... last time I used Symantec was probably for Windows 3.1 or 95. Back when you could install an antivirus program from 3 floppy disks. I dont think it was any worse or better than McAfee.

I think I had Norton 1.0 for DOS. That was a good program. Small, light, included Md5 checksum for all your .exe and .com files; a nice help section with info on viruses. It would inform you if any of your files program files changed. It seemed like an efficient program.

All I use now is F-Prot for DOS, ClamWin, and AntiVir Personal Edition 6.32 (with real-time scanner turned off).

Edited May 6, 2014 by LostInSpace2012

[Flasche]

Yeah... last time I used Symantec was probably for Windows 3.1 or 95. Back when you could install an antivirus program from 3 floppy disks. I dont think it was any worse or better than McAfee.

I think I had Norton 1.0 for DOS. That was a good program. Small, light, included Md5 checksum for all your .exe and .com files; a nice help section with info on viruses. It would inform you if any of your files program files changed. It seemed like an efficient program.

All I use now is F-Prot for DOS, ClamWin, and AntiVir Personal Edition 6.32 (with real-time scanner turned off).

 

Does clamwin even support dos standalone?

[ZortMcGort11]

I think an older version of ClamAv did work on DOS...

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/system/clamav/

But since it's about as old as F-prot, might as well use F-prot because it's a better program.

Edited May 6, 2014 by LostInSpace2012

[Flasche]

I think an older version of ClamAv did work on DOS...

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/system/clamav/

But since it's about as old as F-prot, might as well use F-prot because it's a better program.

 

Alright. Thanks man.

[ZortMcGort11]

no problemo

"http://www.sac.sk/files.php?d=1&l=F"

Files #78 and #79

command line: "f-prot /old"

Edited May 6, 2014 by LostInSpace2012

[jaclaz]

Meh  never liked Symantec. Seems to me that they are crying because they failed to realize, that no one likes bloat-ware. Reminds me of M$ alot.

Rest assured that (unfortunately or fortunately for you) before you were born they used to make some of the finest software around.

The Norton Commander - as an example - was so prominent (and useful/handy) that it even created a new "style", the OFM ("Orthodox File Manager") and an actual common "way of working":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthodox_file_manager#Orthodox_file_managers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Orthodox_file_managers

http://www.softpanorama.org/OFM/index.shtml

At the time it was unthinkable to have not the Norton Commander and the Norton Utilities in DOS.

And for all the Win 3.x period, anyone in his right mind would have used the Norton Desktop.

Then, for years, Ghost has been a reference for imaging programs.

I do understand however how you never liked Symantec, as *anything* they produced in the last - say - ten years was either bloated or intrusive (or both )

jaclaz

[Flasche]

 

Meh  never liked Symantec. Seems to me that they are crying because they failed to realize, that no one likes bloat-ware. Reminds me of M$ alot.

Rest assured that (unfortunately or fortunately for you) before you were born they used to make some of the finest software around.

The Norton Commander - as an example - was so prominent (and useful/handy) that it even created a new "style", the OFM ("Orthodox File Manager") and an actual common "way of working":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthodox_file_manager#Orthodox_file_managers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Orthodox_file_managers

http://www.softpanorama.org/OFM/index.shtml

At the time it was unthinkable to have not the Norton Commander and the Norton Utilities in DOS.

And for all the Win 3.x period, anyone in his right mind would have used the Norton Desktop.

Then, for years, Ghost has been a reference for imaging programs.

I do understand however how you never liked Symantec, as *anything* they produced in the last - say - ten years was either bloated or intrusive (or both )

jaclaz

 

 

Actually I did know about the Norton Desktop for windows 3.x era, but I did not know that they influenced "a new 'style', the OFM ('Orthodox File Manager') and an actual common 'way of working'." . Personally I find it fortunate that I was not around the era of Good Symantec, because it would just make me absolutely livid to see the way that they went . That also answers may Dad's loyalty to Symantec till recently. He now uses PC Matic . (Which has good CNet user rating/reviews "never trust their editor reviews they advertise much")

[jaclaz]

Ahhh, the good ol' times when the difference between success or failure was as little as pressing F5 or pressing F8 by mistake....

 

jaclaz

[JorgeA]

I've been a fan of Norton/Symantec products from way back when Peter Norton published his guide to MS-DOS, which was my computer "bible" at the time. When he/they came out with Norton Antivirus, I signed up at once. (When I heard about it, anyway.)

 

I stuck with them through the difficult years when NAV became a resource hog, but hung on as SystemWorks was a useful PC housekeeping suite. (I neither knew nor trusted any other AV vendors during my personal "PC dark ages.") Today's Norton Internet Security is once again light on resources. However, as of late I fear that they've been losing the thread: first they Metrofied the UI into big hideous blocks. Then they changed the password manager so that it stores your critical info in the cloud   instead of locally, as it used to. And they seem to be completely impervious to their customers' repeated pleas to bring back the lost features.

 

Even Norton 360 itself, the most complete suite, in the name of simplicity has actually become harder to use, for example by hiding scan results and by breaking up tasks that you used to be able to run together. It used to be I could tell N360 to run a custom set of tasks that included a full system AV scan and in the same session pick and choose maintenance functions such as cleaning up temporary files, defragging, and such; but any more you can only select either all tasks or else you have to do them in two separate sessions (AV and then maintenance separately).

 

Moreover, they refuse to support alternative browsers such as Pale Moon. I used to think that Norton simply failed to provide a working "safe browsing" add-on (you know, the feature that gives you green check marks or red X's next to search-engine results), but I just discovered that the actual protection module, Vulnerability Protection, doesn't even show up among the add-ons in Pale Moon -- which leads me to suspect that I'm completely unprotected by Norton if I browse the Web with Pale Moon.

 

To top it all off, in the most recent sets of AV comparative tests, Symantec has refused to participate. They claim it's because they disagree with the testing methodology, but I am not convinced. So I can easily see myself jumping ship.

 

<sigh>

 

--JorgeA

 

[Flasche]

 

Moreover, they refuse to support alternative browsers such as Pale Moon. I used to think that Norton simply failed to provide a working "safe browsing" add-on (you know, the feature that gives you green check marks or red X's next to search-engine results), but I just discovered that the actual protection module, Vulnerability Protection, doesn't even show up among the add-ons in Pale Moon -- which leads me to suspect that I'm completely unprotected by Norton if I browse the Web with Pale Moon.

 

--JorgeA

 

I'm not sure if this addon works with palemoon, for I dont use palemoon, but have you tried the Web of trusts addon (WOT).

[JorgeA]

Thanks, I may try that.

 

I remember looking at WOT some years back and wondering how accurate the ratings are. The concern was that websites could be unfairly boosted (or maligned) by campaigns to give them good (or bad) ratings unrelated to how safe they actually are. Maybe that concern has been addressed since then.

 

--JorgeA