Anti-Botnet Market is Black Eye for AV Industry

alternative coup writes "eWEEK is running a story on the emergence of an anti-botnet market to fill a perceived need for software to deal with botnet-related malware (Trojans, keyloggers, rootkits, etc.). The article characterizes this as 'another black eye' for the existing anti-virus industry — asking consumers to pay twice for protection from things that anti-malware suites are missing. Venture capital money is flowing to these anti-bot products, an implicit statement that the AV giants are not doing their jobs. 'For companies such as Symantec, which sells the Sana-powered Norton AntiBot and anti-malware subscriptions, it's a nickel-and-dime situation. Symantec officials say Norton AntiBot is for a specialized, technical market segment looking for high-end tools to deal with botnets, but [Andrew Jaquith, an analyst with The Yankee Group] said it's a case of anti-malware companies double-dipping.'"

Comments

Re:I've already started dumping Norton

[Zeinfeld]

I recently cleaned up a relative's machine after reports that it was running slowly. He suspected a virus, the problem was that he had five different A/V packages on it, none of which he had asked for. Every tech support guy who had touched the machine had loaded his company package of goodies on it, including their A/V cramware. Then the A/V packages were fighting so it took 15 minutes to bring up explorer.

I killed all the A/V apart from the one that comes with AOL (which was the only one being updated in any case). Machine worked again. Problem solved.