[Osiris]

Symantec Says Free AV Software Can’t "Keep Up"

BLORGE spoke with a product manager at Symantec, David Hall, and got some very interesting quotes from the guy. According to Hall, free anti-virus software isn’t "able to keep up" with products you pay for. He specifically calls out the upcoming Microsoft Security Essentials product, saying it’s incomplete. What say you?

"People tell me, oh well look I use free antivirus because it is free and it protects me from everything in those areas, but when you compare that with what’s really going on in the threat landscape, there is a very, very big gap between what antivirus does and the threats that are being delivered today."

[hikaricloud]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Someone's a little jealous.

If $70+ Norton is so great, why is it such a bloated piece of junk in comparison to any good free AV? They're just mad that they're losing sales, now that there's plenty of free solutions out there.

[Hefemeister]

No Hikaricloud you missed the point. He meant they cannot keep up with how bad they suck.


ohh posting on the tv is fun.

[Yamikotai]

LOL that's hilarious! The problem is, non-techies will believe him :|

[Keyboard Cowboy]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA.

And this coming from the company which most targeted for viruses.
Lost count the number of times where i have seen malware get around norton's and true f*** up a system when norton's tries to do any thing about it

[Osiris]

The company outside of my company, they use SAV 10. I use AVG 8.5. Whenever theres a virus issue, malware, etc, the higher ups are on the phone with SAV looking for a fix. Here I am with my servers protected or at least quarantined such as the last one, conficker.

[Mak213]

I am not the least bit surprised by this. Of course Symantec and McAfee are going to do their best to try and bash the free alternatives. This way they can keep people buying their junk software.

Maybe someone should point these people to the test results from the MSE beta already performed which shows that it is a good solution and much better than the final versions of Norton or McAfee. I bet they would be really shocked that their paid solution doesnt stack up to the free solution.

[vernong1992]

Says them... I remember at Immucor (where I work as IS) we had a heck of time getting this crap removed of the company's system, and Forefront (what we replaced it with) is any day better

[Jorsoft]

While it's true that Norton does provide frequent updates, ever day or two usually, that doesn't at all mean that it's a superior piece of software in and of itself.

[Mak213]

MSE has updates almost 3 times a day. I get one around 8 am and then again at like 8 pm. They are claiming to boost it up to 3 times daily for MSE. So i dont know how Norton can claim that they cant keep up when they are updating far more regularly than their own program.

I have had Avast update on me at least once a day. NOD32 was the same way. I have seen Avast put put up to 4 updates in 1 day before when there was a massive influx of risks found.

Maybe Norton should follow the example of these free solutions and update a bit more regularly themselves....