Welcome Guest. | Log In | Register | Membership Benefits

Antivirus Musical Chairs: Most Consumers Have Tried Multiple AV Products Per Year

Many AV users turn off AV altogether for performance reasons, survey says

Dec 17, 2010 | 02:41 PM | 

By Kelly Jackson Higgins
Dark Reading
Consumers worldwide apparently aren't content to stick with one antivirus software program: A new survey found more than 60 percent have run multiple different ones in a one-year period.

The new poll, conducted by Germany-based AV firm Avira, also found 25 percent of consumers have disabled their AV program because they felt it slowed their computer.

"It's not surprising that consumers try multiple security products each year since everyone is trying to find the right security product which can effectively balance protection and a computer’s resource usage," Sorin Mustaca, a data security expert at Avira, said in a statement. Mustaca said that even more disturbing is the one-fourth of consumers who actually turn off their AV because it's hurting their machine's performance -- leaving them completely "exposed."

And on the other end of the spectrum, around 12 percent of the consumers responding to the survey say they have considered not using the Internet at all for safety reasons. More than 9,000 Avira customers participated in the survey.

AV technology has been criticized for its inability to keep up with new threats, but most security experts say that even so, running antivirus and keeping it up to date is still considered part of best practices security, along with other tools like firewalls.

Have a comment on this story? Please click "Discuss" below. If you'd like to contact Dark Reading's editors directly, send us a message.



Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

Dark Reading encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, Dark Reading moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. Dark Reading further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
Subscribe to RSS



Insider Threat Reports

report How to Prevent an Illicit Data Dump
There are no silver bullets when it comes to protecting company and customer data from loss or theft, but there are technological and procedural systems that will go a long way toward preventing a WikiLeaks-like data dump. Here are some tips and tricks to help protect your organization's most sensitive information.

report Email and Data Loss
Email encryption, rights management, email gateways, and full-on data loss prevention systems can keep corporate data secure. Here's a look at the pros and cons of each, to help you determine what?s best for your business.

report An Insider Threat Reality check
Heightened concern that users could inadvertently expose or leak -- or purposely steal -- an organization's sensitive data has spurred debate over the proper technology and training to protect the crown jewels. In this special retrospective of recent news coverage, Dark Reading takes a look at how organizations are handling the threat -- and what users are really up to.

Other reports from the Insider Threat Tech Center:

Related Content

Protection from Insider Threats
Preventing data misuse by trusted users is the most difficult information protection challenge. Insiders already have full authorization to the data, making traditional IT secure methods in effective. Learn about a more powerful security approach and proven strategies to prevent insider misuse.

Strategies for Protecting Intellectual Property
A company's intellectual property (IP) represents a significant portion of assets and a critical component of competitive differentiation, but the potential value of any IP is directly linked to its limit of acceptable use. Learn how you can put your IP to work within collaborative environments without undue risk and maximize competitive advantages.

Protecting Against WikiLeaks Type Events and the Insider Threat
The sensitive information supplied to WikiLeaks and other social justice websites comes from trusted insiders. Get the answers to the open gaps left in the WikiLeaks story and learn how you can prevent insider threats that are just as detrimental in your organization.

Insider Threat: An Inside Look at a Fortune 100 Company's Prevention Program
The ways and means by which a privileged user can successfully steal proprietary data today is staggering. One venerable company that suffered a devastating incident decided to do something about it. Find out how it built one of the most productive insider threat prevention programs in the Fortune 100.

Protection of Intellectual Property and Trade Secrets across a Global Enterprise
As a designer and manufacturer of industrial technology, this Fortune 50 company knew that securing their intellectual property (IP) and trade secret data was essential. It created a program to identify risks to their IP and trade secrets and soon caught a privileged user attempting to compromise IP. Download this case study to see a real example of intellectual property protection at work.




Featured Webcasts
Featured Whitepapers
Featured Reports