How not to measure PC security tools

Graham cluley
Graham Cluley
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There’s an interesting article by Mark Ward on the BBC News website today, where security firm Prevx (you’ll remember them from their part in the BBC Click botnet fiasco) proposes a new way of measuring the effectiveness of anti-virus software.

According to the report, Prevx will..

..create and distribute a small program that will gather statistics on how quickly security companies find and remove malicious code. The figures will reveal if users are being left vulnerable and for how long as well as rank response times.

Apparently the proposed tool will “log when files are installed.. [and] would alert a user if it noticed that a fix had been created for a particular virus or trojan it had spotted on a PC.”

Leaving aside for now the suggestion in the…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

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