* First of One:
Then I've been lucky for 12 years and counting. Not a bad track record.
Well, if it is 12 years or 20 years is irrelevant as malware got only
really really bad within the last 5 to 7 years. Before that it was very
easy to avoid malware, however this is not the case anymore.
Your system may be infected, too. The only difference is you can say your
system is clean with 99.9% confidence, while I can say it with 99.8%
confidence.
Updating your antimalware program once a month does in no way give you
even 90% confidence, in reality you are probably more down to 70%, if at
all. Timely updates are critical for antimalware tools, updating once a
month is barely batter than not updating it.
Except no single AV app is completely effective anyway. Depending on whether
the developer gets the virus sample before or after it's in the wild, there
may be a lag in getting the signatures prepared.
Right. So what? Just because a virus program is not 100% effective or
that there might be a delay between new virii and new signatures there
is no reason to add another, even longer delay.
Following your logic, a cancer patient would only get his medications
once a month when he is supposed to take it daily, simply because there
is a delay in development and diagnostics of cancer, and despite the
treatment he might die anyways.
Different dev houses get
different virus submissions, too, which affects their detection ability.
Not really. Today, antivirus companies and security experts works quite
closely together and exchange virus signatures and malware information
quickly.
Occasionally I get infected spam email attachments that penetrate Yahoo
Mail's Symantec virus scanner, but they scan positive using Avira with my
weeks-old definitions.
Well, "Symantec" says it all.
What's more important? A good scan engine or
daily-updated definitions?
It is not one or another. One is worthless without the other. Simple as
that.
If you work in a particularly high-risk environment, you would need to scan
files on-demand with at least two AV programs (they obviously cannot run in
the background simultaneously). "Zulu" from alt.2600.cracks advocated this,
using some metaphor about contraceptives...
If you use files from what you call "high-risk environments" then the
safest way is to only use them is in locked-down virtual machines.
But that makes regular timely updates of your antimalware tool not less
important.
Benjamin
