Symantec VP Brian Dye declares the death of antivirus in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, although some might disagree-- including Kaspersky Lab, which published a rebuttal soon afterwards.
"We don't think of antivirus as a moneymaker in any way," Dye tells the WSJ before describing how Symantec is set to reinvent itself in order to reflect the shifting security industry.
According to Dye antivirus software catches just 45% of attacks, but still accounts for over 40% of Symantec revenue.
The company will be offering clients security briefings on specific threats, as well as technology able to look for more advanced malicious software lurking inside networks. And it needs to do so, as faces revenue declines even as it continues turning a profit (if due to cost cutting measures).
However according to Kaspersky such claims might be exaggerated. "I've heard antiviruses being declared dead and buried quite a few times over the years, but they're still here with us-- alive and kicking," Eugene Kaspersky tells The Inquirer. "I fully agree that single-layer signature-based virus scanning is nowhere near a sufficient degree of protection - not for individuals, not for organizations large or small; however, that's been the case for many years."
The company elaborates further on the point in a blog post telling how "superior quality" security products combine various technologies, including proactive behavior detection, roll-back mechanisms, cloud-enabled protection, application control, sandboxing and application exploit prevention, among others.
In other words, perhaps antivirus is not dead-- maybe it has simply become… "security."
Go Symantec Develops New Attack on Cyberhacking (WSJ.com)
Go Eugene Kaspersky Lashes Out at Symantec's "Antivirus is Dead" Remark (The Inquirer)
