At 12:15 PM 28/12/2006, CW wrote:
No, I'm not arguing that free is always better (it isn't) I'm just
arguing that because something is free doesn't make it ipso facto "bad".
Neither was I. I'm a big fan of free, but only when it's as good or
better. Or at least good enough. In the security world, "good
enough" isn't, unfortunately. Not when there are better options.
I think we're debating a bit in a circle because we aren't arguing
the same point. What I'm saying is that for the average CONSUMER,
there are only two AV softwares on the market (well, three now
counting Microsoft OneCare). That's Symantec/McAfee which make up
almost 80% of the marketspace. You can go to any
Walmart/Target/etc. and buy them. Consumers who spend $15 on dialup
know those products brand name. Convincing them to switch to ESET
or Kapersky, which cost the same as two products they know of is a
very difficult proposition.
That's our job. I educate customers. 90% of the people who come
into my store by NOD32 once I show them the comparisons. The other
10% generally come back in two months, I clean the new viruses off
their machines and then they buy NOD32. If someone is shopping at
Walmart for a security product, they deserve to get owned.
> How much does one cost? Perhaps my argument fits here as well - but
> of course, I wasn't talking about firewalls.
A few hundred :) Doctors offices happily have FireBoxes and
Symantec Gateways, Trend Gateways etc. that do this function pretty well.
Ok, I might go free then. :)
In regards to the BOOT scan, you might take a look at how AVAST does
it. It is very impressive. Basically, AVAST stops the boot process
and does a command-prompt scan (even in XP) before the GUI
loads. This is one of those things that I really, really like about
the software, and something I consider very unique. There have been
times I've been to a client, whipped out a pen-drive, done an Avast
install and installed the updates, told it to do a boot scan, and
cleaned a PC before I left their building. That's something I
haven't seen any other AV software do (period). I'm not sure
exactly how they insert it in as a boottime scane, but it works, and
it's text-mode prompts to delete/remove virus, etc. and keep a log
file while it's at it create a brilliant paper trail that shows the
client that the product worked.
I'm going to give it a try. The boot scan does sound cool.
T
