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Anti-virus fallacies

Антивирусная неправда

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When heavy artillery is necessary

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Tuesday, January 30, 2018

To reliably protect against malware, an anti-virus must incorporate a basic set of features. Signature-based analysis should be complemented by preventive protection from unknown threats. It goes without saying that, a duo of this kind will use hardware resources such as the CPU, RAM and disk space. A reliable anti-virus will use these resources anyway. The optimisation techniques used in anti-viruses can vary and that is what we need to look at.

For example, when scanning a computer, Dr.Web monitors the performance and adjusts its CPU, memory and disk usage to ensure overall system performance is maintained. Other anti-viruses use different approaches. For example, they don't load virus databases into the memory and instead use file mapping and repeatedly send queries to databases on the hard drive. This approach allows for a low CPU load but lowers overall performance and reduces the lifespan of the SSD drives (provided such drives are being used in the system). Sometimes users get irritated when they see substantial Dr.Web memory usage numbers in the Task Manager, but that's the price of maintaining reliable protection from malware (however, people's irritation with certain other anti-viruses for the way they slow down computers is not entirely unjustified).

Companies took note of users' dissatisfaction and responded by offering lightweight security solutions. These are usually presented as breakthroughs in information security. Marketers claim that solutions of this kind offer as much as conventional anti-viruses or even more but have a smaller footprint in the system and sometimes their operation may even go unnoticed. But everything comes at a price, and the smokescreen of marketing slogans conceals serious security gaps.

Some users believe Dr.Web Katana is an advanced product—that it’s that very same non-signature anti-virus that doesn't slow down the machines it runs on, doesn't conflict with other software and can be used instead of a conventional product. We hate to disappoint you, but it can't replace a normal anti-virus.

#anti-virus #Dr.Web_KATANA

The Anti-virus Times recommends

  • Dr.Web KATANA incorporates a set of preventive protection technologies that are meant to be used to supplement a conventional anti-virus (not Dr.Web) and serve as an extra layer of security against unknown threats, primarily encryption ransomware. This product can help in a situation when users for some reason can’t discard their anti-virus but still want to have state-of-the-art protection from unknown threats. Dr.Web KATANA can't provide all-round protection on its own.
  • And neither can any other lightweight product, but for some reason manufacturers of similar solutions fail to mention this detail. Don't fall for marketing tricks!

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