Interesting for sure. How can we spend so many years in a field of study (Malware) and not know all the players?? I think I may have seen one of those TV ads you mentioned too. It's certainly interesting that none of the big boys advertise on TV--they don't have to. The IT industry has their own standards. I guess if you look at the products that are bundled with computers on QVC or HSN; it's all over the map for consumer user products. One time, and you'll find this interesting, I saw an actual Rep from Symantec-Norton show up on one of these 1/2 hour segments selling Dell or HP computers on HSN; they now have a special programming segment to reach potential consumers looking at buying their next PC from a TV ad. The information was very condensed, but accurate, and they only gave the S-N guy about 90 sec. for his pitch. That's hard to cover an area like AV security-malware in 90 sec.! And on National TV to boot! Job well done. But, now the other guys are creeping in and are paying big bucks (probably like Bullguard) to get their products bundled with Dell, HP, Toshiba, etc. and even more to get TV infomercial coverage!
Separate topic here (hopefully Admins will move this soon!); I tried Nod32 a few times with very mixed results. It failed horribly on testing we did on corporate networks 15 years ago, and I haven't done much with it until I was at TSF. I actually used it to fix a virus that was on a Client computer that none of my other products I normally use was able to detect much less remove. That impressed me. After that though, on further testing, it did not do well and caused severe infections and windows corruption to the point that a Windows reset was required. Since then, I don't feel confident enough in it to deploy it to my home users (mostly Seniors) nor my Business customers. I think you will recall that I have devised a 5-layer anti-malware load on my computers which uses products from 3 companies: (1) Avast, (2) MBAM, and (3) TrendMicro. This particular load profile works good for me in a rural area I now live in where the computer illiteracy rate is quite high. I currently have a 99% non-return rate from Customer computers with this load profile. Yes, I experiment with other products such as Nod32, but I haven't been able to improve what I'm already using. Of course that could change as the threats landscape changes, and I'm now seeing a lot more "scareware" spyware viruses getting through my current load profile than before. So, I'm always looking at other products possibly as background or on-demand scanners such as MBAM, to perform prevention/detection/removal.
K. C U L8R!
<<<BBJ>>>
As the testing you mentioned showed, it's an average product or maybe a little below average. It might be useful in the Academic or Non-Profit areas, but not F500! If I run across one of my AV testing articles, I'll take a look and see if they show up there and post the link back here. I think I already mentioned that if no IT department adopted this product, then I am certainly not interested!
And based on what 1 person says; I'm not going to change over everything I've been doing on my security loads on my computers or client's computers <no offense, Nezkeys79>. If it works for him, that's great.
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I've been playing with viruses since 1980, and I even have been hired to deploy them into Company's networks to infect them and detect holes in their security defenses and then provide remedies to them. Just some fyi. Most of the large AV makers are also in a community which provides reporting tools both in their products and on their websites (Avast, Symantec-Norton, Intel-McAfee). Since it seems you've spent a fair amount of time investigating your particular problem, if you've gotten anywhere with identifying the viruses or bad websites involved in your PORT-SCAN attacks, it would be good if you could report them to the AV makers as I do.<<<
