Anti-malware Vendors Stare Down Microsoft Threat

Captain Rose writes "Matt Hines at eWEEK has stepped up to report the other side of the story CNET inked recently on the perceived death knell that Vista will deliver to independent anti-spyware vendors. There's definitely a fight in store (David v. Goliath), though who knows how long we'll have to wait to see it play out now that Vista's delayed yet again. Is this a bit of foreshadowing on how the new Microsoft OS will address the self-replicating, zero-day spyware threats?" From the article: "Most industry watchers concede that it will be hard for Microsoft to easily displace the enterprise security businesses of leading vendors such as Symantec, McAfee and Trend Micro, which market integrated packages of applications to companies wishing to solve long lists of problems. However, for firms that are focused on only one of those problem areas, analysts said, Vista and the other Microsoft security products could pose a significant threat."

Comments

Jeez...

[Geldon]

First M$ creates an entire industry focused around fixing holes in their OS. Now they are threatening to fix their own holes and that industry is mad at them?

It seems to me this is like horses being mad at cars for making them obsolete.

However, I am yet to be convinced that Vista will not require third party anti-malware support.

be secure or BE secure?

[geoff lane]

If Vista is as secure as we are being told by MS, why would it need anti-virus code from any source?

Check who's buying anti-malware software.

[rob_squared]

I'm guessing the biggest buyers of antivirus, firewall, and spyware detecting software will be knowledgeable users and corporations. Even if you're talking about AOL users with their default installs, AOL still had to make a deal with MacAfee.

My guess is that most corporations and users will turn off the bundled anti-whatever, and use what they trust. After all, should you trust the company that created the problem after they sat for years without doing much, to solve the problem?

It'll be the same story as always

[doctor_nation]

Since everyone will be running MS's anti-spyware program, the spyware folks will concentrate on defeating it, just like virus writers concentrate on beating Windows "security". So there will still be a market for other vendors, since they would hopefully be better at stopping spyware than MS' default option. And since there's lots of them, it's harder to defeat them all. Even now, it's pretty well accepted that you need at least two anti-spyware programs to catch everything.

What about AVG Free?

[digitaldc]

leading vendors such as Symantec, McAfee and Trend Micro,

AVG Free works quite well and has removed Trojans that Symantec couldn't.

get rid of spyware? Ha.

[xx_toran_xx]

Yeah, sure, they'll get rid of spyware. Just like they got rid of spam.

Re:Don't worry!

[XMilkProject]

Don't worry about that! They told the same about anti virus, web browsers and office suite!

Perhaps you should evaluate the logic of your statement?

Microsofts web browser put the competition out of business. (and got themselves in a bit of a legal battle too)

In the 80's and 90's Word Perfect was the defacto standard for an office suite, and Claris Works was popular on the mac. Then microsoft brought out it's office suite, and has all but put the competition out of buisness.

Not sure where you are going with the anti-virus, since Microsoft has never released one. But when they do, I'm pretty confident it'll steal the market share too.

The point i'm trying to make, is that while all of us know that plenty of non-microsoft products are becoming available, and are even better products in many cases, the fact still remains that microsoft obliterated the competition in all of these areas and only the FOSS community is able to gain any traction at all.

You gotta remember that just becuase you and I use FireFox and OpenOffice.org, doesn't change the fact that 99% of computer users are on Internet Explorer and MS Office.

Re:Don't worry!

[MBCook]

I have to wonder at what point will people stop and think to themselves "MS made this buggy OS that needs anti-virus software and anti-spyware software, so why am I trusting them by buying their anti-whatever software?"

That will hit some people. Not everyone, many not most, but some. Maybe then a bigger backlash will start. It will probably depend on if the anti-whatever software is free or not.

You've got to love the oddity of it all though. What if tomorrow Oracle released a version of their software that would randomly drop tables? Let's say for the sake of argument that everyone used it anyway. What if Oracle's solution was to sell you software that would catch that happening and instantly put your table back?

What if your Ford car would randomly stall, and Ford's solution was to give you a anti-stall upgrade on your car?

I hope Vista fixes a lot of this (I'm on OS X so it doesn't matter), because it is just mind-bending if you think about it.In what other industry (other than possibly government) would this kind of thing be accepted so well?