Computer Malware Reading Time: 3 minutes
Computer Malware

Sometimes a marketing analogy misleads us about the complex idea it is trying to simplify. A great example of this is equating PC security to the immune system of the human body. Because we accept being unwell with a cold as a fact of life, we assume computer infections are inevitable too. They are not.

Equating the concept of biological viruses with computer viruses is a decades-old idea created by a clever marketing person to introduce average users to the complex ideas of computers and malware. Viruses sounded dangerous and cool, computer malware sounded complicated. At the time, many of the mechanisms we understood in biology could be likened to similar mechanisms in malware. At first, the analogy helped people grasp the complexity of computer malware.

The terms virus and anti-virus are still used to describe malware and the tools that detect known malware. We have come to accept that some level of infection is inevitable. The outdated analogy now fails us while it leads us to accept less than total protection against malware.

You can stop all forms of malware from infecting a system. Computers are not biological systems.

With each release, computer environments become more secure. Operating systems provide very limited methods of code execution causing every executable file to use controllable interfaces within the operating system.

Would you travel in a car this has a 99% likelihood of not exploding in a year?
Would you fly on a plane that has a 98.7% chance of not crashing?
Would you eat food that is only 1% likely to give you food poisoning?
Would you use a spreadsheet that calculates correctly only 99.5% of the time?
Yet you accept malware protection that is performing at less than 100%?

There are already solutions with a track record of 100% success in stopping every form of previously known and as-yet unidentified malware. Imagine that! There are solutions so good that no malware, even new forms as yet undetected, can infect a system.

Why is everyone not using these systems with this sort of track record? One word, marketing! Hundreds of endpoint security vendors use the virus analogy to talk about providing protection in medical terms with organic levels of performance. The analogy misleads us that when a flu shot does not guarantee protection against the flu, it must be the same for computer malware.

Solutions that isolate a file with an unknown security provenance protect against both known malware and previously unidentified forms of malware. There are several types of isolation solutions on the market. Avoid those that prevent the use of new files while they are evaluated as they negatively impact your business. Avoid those demanding a massive amount of system overhead to work as they negatively impact the endpoint.

here is just one solution that uses a virtualized auto-containment model that is light on system resource utilization and allows the system to use unknown files while they are being evaluated. This solution can be seen here https://enterprise.comodo.com

If you want a practical solution that has a documented track record of preventing ALL malware from infecting your systems and does it without creating a restrictive user environment, check out https://enterprise.comodo.com.

No one can know for sure that tomorrows malware won’t find a new way in, but as of today Comodo AEP is literally batting 1000!

START FREE TRIAL GET YOUR INSTANT SECURITY SCORECARD FOR FREE