Risk of Virus Protection

No anti-virus works 100 percent. Your AV vendor will readily admit it. How much less than 100 percent? It might surprise you how much less.

In terms of reactive detection, on Windows7 systems, most AV programs are effective just 85% of the time. In terms of pro-active detection, effectiveness drops to 70%.

Hard reality: enterprise grade AV is like a security system that only works 3 out of every 4 days.

That's probably not what consumers imagine they're getting when they purchase enterprise grade AV software. They probably expect better than that.

Anti-virus vendors' ability to handle the huge quantity of newly emerging malware and their accuracy in detecting previously unknown malware is by definition hamstrung.

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About Virus Bulletin: A security information portal, testing and certification body, with offices in Oxfordshire, UK. In operation since February 2009. The Virus Bulleting RAP test measures AV products' "detection rates over the freshest samples available at the time the products are submitted to the test, as well as samples not seen until after product databases are frozen, thus reflecting both the vendors' ability to handle the huge quantity of newly emerging malware and their accuracy in detecting previously unknown malware."