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Microsoft Plans To Sell Anti-Virus Software
EvilCowzGoMoo writes "From the makers of our favorite OS comes: Anti-Virus! Yes you heard me right. According to an article on Reuters.com Microsoft is developing its own brand of anti-virus software. Asked if that would hurt sales of competing products, such as Network Associates' McAfee and Symantec's Norton family of products, Nash (chief of Microsoft's security business unit) said that Microsoft said that it would sell its anti-virus program as a separate product from Windows, rather than including it in Windows. My only question is: If they can't seem to patch their OS fast enough, what makes them think they can keep their AV software up to date?"
what makes them think they can keep their AV software up to date?
It just goes to show you that business isn't about who's right or who's wrong but who can make it sound good.
They shouldn't need a separate program to stop Outlook from doing something stupid. It should just not do something stupid in the first place.
But that would leave Microsoft even more vulnerable to being sued when holes were found in the OS. A virus that hits because both the OS and the Anti-Virus software were defective and made by the same company? It sounds like a lawyer's wet dream.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
Conflict of interest.
Will the projected earnings from AV division affect security choices?
Sure does present a MASSIVE conflict of interest issue. Let's see... a monopoly... selling stuff to guard their own product from defects.
Reminds me of the Dilbert with the bonus for finding bugs and the comment is "I'm gonna write myself a minivan!"
Telcos have alot of dark fibre in the States. Most people assume that's optical fibre...but it's actually moral fibre.
> Better low-level access, as well as being able to
:P Maybe financially that makes sense, they get to sell you Outlook AND the anti-virus, but technically speaking it's just plugging holes in the dam.
> intercept attempts by something like Outlook to
> execute arbitrary files.
Yes, because that's such a major improvement over just fixing Outlook itself.
The only AV software that Windows needs is Microsoft to stop making so many bloody ways to infect the system.
We'll be seeing virus updates that clean and fix the problem before there is even a patch out. What's that? You forgot to renew your yearly subscription? Better pony up or you'll be vulnerable for a long time.
It's just a little scary that a company that is responsible for almost all viruses and worms is now going to benefit financially from such failure to secure their product. They're marketing their shortcomings to you as a new product! What will they think of next?
But isn't this a conflict of interest? If MS gets additional revenue from an anti-virus program (especially if that program is a subscription based program), then wouldn't there be internal pressure to make the OS "not as secure" so they can get additional money from there customers? If all of these security initiatives to make the OS more secure pay off, then the kill the market for there own anit-virus products.
Plus it seems odd to make somebody pay more money to overcome some limitations in the original product, kind of like saying "here we sold you a crappy OS, pay us money and we'll protect you from our mistakes! errrrmmmm, but no guarantes, if our anti-virus software doesn't work you can't sue us")
Of course, there is only so much any OS can do from protecting users from being stupid, and I guess that is what the anti-virus software does. But if the anti-virus software can protect customers from being stupid, couldn't the OS too? (thus negating the previous argument of "there is only so much any OS can do from protecting the users from being stupid")
I don't know if bundling the Anti-Virus software would be any better, then you get anti-trust concerns. Plus I think it is extremely important to have multiple Anti-Virus software vendors, if there is only one Anti-Software program (which is what would happen if MS bundled the program with the OS), then it would be a lot easier for virus writers to figure out how to bypass the safe-guards.
Well, those are my rambling thoughts. In conclusion, I guess I think MS should stay out of the anti-virus software market. Maybe they should concentrate on putting better hooks into the OS so that other software vendors could to their jobs better; or better yet, just make the damned OS more secure.
"I'm a Genius!"*
*Not an actual Genius
Unfortunately there isn't a program to stop the user being stupid.
True enough. But then it is easier to modify applications and their design than it is to modify human beings and their design (well, at least for now...)
Sometimes products are distributed that haven't been thought out well enough to consider the stupid user problem.
In this case, "convenient features" about Outlook running attachments is colliding with user stupidity, gullibility, etc. [It's like stories of "free baseball night" at the ballgame - "fans" started to throw their free gifts onto the field when play got boring. Somebody wasn't thinking far enough ahead.]
While Outlooks ubiquity might exacerbate the problems that Outlook users experience, other mail clients do not seem to have as many problems as Outlook does and certainly not as widespread an impact.
Careful product design can mitigate the unavoidable problems of "stupid users in a cruel world".
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Does anybody else find this a bit unfair? (Yeah, I know that's M$'s gameplan, but still)
I mean, the only OS which viruses are a major threat is windows.. and now they're going to sell AV software? That just takes the piss in my opinion.
"Hey Bill, we can't possibly fight off all these viruses, surely we'll start losing customers at some point", "Hey, I know! lets sell some Antivirus software, that way we make yet more money and we can get away with releasing patches at an even slower rate, and we get away with terrible programming"...
And if they are running a Unix variant that attachment will only run at user level. No low level system modification can be made, so you can then log in as another user (or root) and delete said infected files which should all be in their home dir and not mixed in with 10000 .dll files. They should also have to make a little extra effort to get it to run in the first place, which will discourage some percentage of them too.