How important is it to keep upto date with AV software (not defs/engines)

Im sat here on my works PC we are using Mcafee V4.5.1 sp1, but it has the latest engine and definitions on.

How well do you think it performs to Mcafees latest incarnation ?

Generalising, what about old v new software (but with latest definitions/engines) with any AV vendor ?

How important is it ?

I own Kaspersky 4.5 personal pro (Acutally it just expired), trialled 5 personal pro, waiting for the updated version before I considering purchasing, just wonder how important it is from a virus catching point of view (not software bugs/stability as there will always be these issues).

 

good question if you ask me. I think there will be improvements made regarding mcafee 4.5.1 to version 8 / 9 for some people, for others there won't be. with latest engines regarding to unpackers/heuristics I think you would be safe. as regarding to speed and comptability well you allready know cause that wasn't your question.

I believe many people still use the old 4.5 pro (kav) just because of the few/none improvements in regarding to version 5 pro (unpackers are the same, speed is even better on my pc and detection is at the moment better as for X defs.). just like me btw I still got the 4.5.93 as backup and is working as a champ.

In general, I think it would be better to upgrade for various reasons, look at NOD32, it detects more then a year back.

Just my two cents

 

Excellent question Nick, and something which (quietly) worries me. I'm still on NAV 2003 (No flames please!). It has served me quite well, but I am VERY reluctant to add further 'bloat' by upgrading to 20004/2005! Clearly I will have to 'bite the bullet' in the next 12-18 months, and consider a newer version of some AV (Not necessarily Norton!)......but I think I will probably do this on a clean install of XP. Apparently, getting rid of Norton can be quite an arduous and 'messy' task which I am not looking forward to! Certainly, for some people (like me) it is a case of perservering with the AV that came pre-installed with their box.
Buck.

 

I'd say that the more recent tools are more capable to handling polymorphic and packed virusses. Also it will probably be more aware of the rsiky activities of the more recent virusses (blaster, sasser). Their behaviour is the trigger to catch them.
Scanning using a signature is will only reveal those virusses that match the signature.

 

Same here Buck.

Thinking of doing exactly that when my subscription runs out in May.

Regards - Charles

 

You poor poor person. I'm on my work PC also running that horrible version of Mcafee. The machine is a P4 2.8Ghz 256MB ram but it's regularly brought to a standstill by Mcafee stealing 50%+ CPU.

 

How is Kaspersky 3.5 compared to 4.5 and 5? I had it some time ago in windows 98 and liked the low resource usage. I'm told it uses the same defs as the posterior versions so it might be a good backup scanner. Does it run ok in XP?

 

I think it's important. As I read in some forums, KAV 3 isn't able to detect some malware that version 4.5 and 5.0 are able to.
Another example, is NOD32. NOD32 1.0 hasn't the Advanced Heuristic however NOD32 2.0 has the Advanced Heuristic module which is able to detect most new ITW threats.