Is anti-virus (AV) dead? In a word, no. It's not even reeling; it's just evolving. That's the consensus in the market- place, at least. And among users, the answer is mainly that it would be foolish to walk away from the technology, given the number of new viruses foisted on the world each day. "People have been predicting the death of signature-based AV for years," says Richard Jacobs, CTO at Sophos. But as the maxim goes: "Would you give up your AV solution right now?" For most people, the answer would be "No!" In the eyes of many, however, there is no question that the traditional AV model cannot be sustained forever. That model - in which viral code signatures are generated from pieces of identified malware, signatures propagated to end- user machines, and local scans used to discover them - is becoming technologically outmoded. Just sheer numbers illustrate the problem. "A few years ago, we saw maybe a few hundred new viruses a year," says Jacobs. "Now we may see 2,500 per day. And in a short time, we may see much more."
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