One of the major causes of the rapid spread of cyber crime the world over is the fact that the citizens do not take appropriate security measures in the virtual world to safeguard themselves against such crimes. In the real world we take all necessary measures to remain secure – this we do knowingly and sometimes even unknowingly and automatically. However in the virtual world this is often not the case. People generally never even think that if they need to be secure in the virtual world they have to make some extra effort in that direction. One such security measure that a citizen can take for his/her virtual security is – always installing and regularly updating a proper anti-virus in the device which is being used. Antivirus is software that has been developed to prevent, detect and remove computer viruses. Possibly, the first publicly documented removal of an "in the wild" computer virus (i.e. the "Vienna virus") was performed by Bernd Fix in 1987. An antivirus is a powerful piece of software essential on a Windows PC. A properly chosen and installed antivirus runs in the background on your computer, checking every file you open. This is generally known as on-access scanning, background scanning, resident scanning, real-time protection, or something else, depending on your antivirus program. When you double-click an EXE file, it may seem like the program launches immediately – but it doesn’t. Your antivirus software checks the program out first, comparing it to known viruses, worms, and other types of malware. Anti-virus also employs a procedure called Heuristic. Heuristics allows an antivirus program to identify new or modified types of malware, even without virus definition files. For example, if an antivirus program notices that a program running on your system is trying to open every .EXE file on your system, infecting it by writing a copy of the original program into it, the antivirus program can detect this program as a new, unknown type of virus. Heuristics can’t be too aggressive or they’ll start blocking legitimate software as viruses. As a result, even though Heuristic procedures are commonly used in all antiviruses, they can only detect and prevent known worms and viruses. If a new worm or virus is unleashed in the cyber world – it is very likely that your secure and highly priced anti-virus will not even detect it let alone block it! It was estimated as far back as 2010 by the German research institute AV-Test that there were 4.9 Crore strains of computer malware in the world. By 2011 the Antivirus company McAfee reported that they were identifying 20 Lakh new pieces of malware every month. The situation reached alarming proportions when another anti-virus giant Kaspersky Lab reported it identified and isolated nearly 200,000 new malware samples every single day! But the shocker is still to come. The shocker lies in the test conducted to detect the success rate of the antivirus is detecting and neutralizing the cyber malware threat to our devices and systems. Back in the year 2012 researchers at Imperva – a data security research firm at Red Shores in California (USA) and students of Technion – Israel Institute of Technology decided to put the standard antivirus tools to the test. This was to find out in reality the efficacy of leading antivirus tools. The team collected eighty two new viruses and ran the malware against the threat detection engines of more than forty of the largest antivirus companies including McAfee, Microsoft, Symantec & Kaspersky Lab. To the surprise of everyone it was found in this experiment and study that only 5% of the viruses were detected by the various antivirus’ being tested. That meant that a whopping 95% passed undetected. Imagine if this was the success rate of our body immune system that fights with virus’ that attack us. With a 5% success rate we would be dead in a matter of hours! In the above discussion it becomes clear that though viruses are many in the cyber world – almost in hundreds of thousands – their detection, isolation and neutralization by an antivirus or anti-malware software is a big challenge. And according to data available today this task is somewhat difficult to do in toto. There are and always will be loopholes in this form of security in the cyber space. It must be borne in mind that antivirus’ are designed to combat known virus’ but not new and unknown ones. Thus a good antivirus detects a known virus and maybe identifies a new one from its behavior – but to detect all new and innovative malwares being produced and let loose – is an impossible task for any antivirus. Thus though installing a trustworthy antivirus is a prerequisite to safe browsing and existence in the cyber world – it is not the be all and end all of cyber security. The citizen while using his device should have an installed and functional antivirus but he/she must keep in mind there is no better tool for personal security in this space then one’s own brain and own response. So keep your mind alert and aware at all times and recognize and avoid threats to the best of your ability. Think for yourself and be safe rather than depending on softwares and machines, and be sorry!
