For years, nails have been hammering down on the coffin of
anti-virus. But none have really put the beast to bed. An industry
founded in the 1980s, a time when John McAfee was known as a pioneer rather than a tequila-downing rascal, has survived despite the rise of umpteen firms who claim to offer services that eradicate the need for anti-virus.
Now, however, movie streaming titan Netflix NFLX +6.78% is hammering a rather significant nail in that old coffin, one that could well lead to the industry’s final interment. Because Netflix, a well-known innovator in the tech sphere, is the first major web firm to openly dump its anti-virus, FORBES has learned. And where Netflix goes, others often follow; just look at the massive uptick of public cloud usage in recent years, following the company’s major investment in Amazon Web Services.
Let’s take a second to look at the decline of the anti-virus industry. Anti-virus has been the first line of defence for many firms over the last quarter of a century. Generally speaking, AV relies on malware signatures and behavioural analysis to uncover threats to people’s PCs and smartphones. But in the last 10 years, research has indicated AV is rarely successful in detecting smart malware. In 2014, Lastline Labs discovered only 51 per cent of AV scanners were able to detect new malware samples.
Despite its shortcomings, many are still required to keep hold of
their AV product because they’re required to by compliance laws, in
particular PCI DSS, the regulation covering payment card protections.
There’s also the argument that AV is necessary to pick up the
“background noise”, as Quocirca analyst Bob Tarzey describes it.
“Despite more and more targeted attacks, random viruses are still rife
and traditional AV is still good at dealing with these,” he claims.
Major players, including Symantec SYMC +0.00% and Kaspersky, continue to make significant sums, even if results aren’t stellar.
But it’s now possible to dump anti-virus altogether, and Netflix is about to prove it. The firm has found a vendor that covers those compliance demands in the form of SentinelOne. As SentinelOne CEO Tomer Weingarten told me, his firm was given third-party certification from the independent AV-TEST Institute, validating it can do just what anti-virus does in terms of protecting against known threats, whilst providing “an additional new layer of advanced threat protection”. Its end-point security doesn’t rely on signatures, it monitors every process on a device to check for irregularities and does not perform on-system scans or require massive updates like anti-virus, Weingarten said.
Now, however, movie streaming titan Netflix NFLX +6.78% is hammering a rather significant nail in that old coffin, one that could well lead to the industry’s final interment. Because Netflix, a well-known innovator in the tech sphere, is the first major web firm to openly dump its anti-virus, FORBES has learned. And where Netflix goes, others often follow; just look at the massive uptick of public cloud usage in recent years, following the company’s major investment in Amazon Web Services.
Let’s take a second to look at the decline of the anti-virus industry. Anti-virus has been the first line of defence for many firms over the last quarter of a century. Generally speaking, AV relies on malware signatures and behavioural analysis to uncover threats to people’s PCs and smartphones. But in the last 10 years, research has indicated AV is rarely successful in detecting smart malware. In 2014, Lastline Labs discovered only 51 per cent of AV scanners were able to detect new malware samples.
Netflix is quitting anti-virus. Will its millions of users benefit? (Photo by Eric Charbonneau/Invision for Netflix/AP Images)
But it’s now possible to dump anti-virus altogether, and Netflix is about to prove it. The firm has found a vendor that covers those compliance demands in the form of SentinelOne. As SentinelOne CEO Tomer Weingarten told me, his firm was given third-party certification from the independent AV-TEST Institute, validating it can do just what anti-virus does in terms of protecting against known threats, whilst providing “an additional new layer of advanced threat protection”. Its end-point security doesn’t rely on signatures, it monitors every process on a device to check for irregularities and does not perform on-system scans or require massive updates like anti-virus, Weingarten said.
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