Who Fights AntiViruses?

These are 'The Good Guys' in the Anti-virus battle:

Everyone in the United States has heard of the leading antivirus vendors Symantec, Mcafee, Computer Associates, and Trend Micro.

These companies have market-leading presence, particularly in the United States. Microsoft is also becoming a key player in this market.

Microsoft acquired intellectual property and technology from GeCad software in 2003. The GeCad company's home-base is in Bucharest, Romania.

Microsoft also Pelican Software, which had a behavior based security as well as Giant Company Software for spyware and Sybari Software, which manages virus, spam, and phishing filtering.

A lot of discussion has centered on whether or not Microsoft has come into its own as a dominant factor in the antivirus market - by way of simply bundling its security technologies along with operating systems - at no charge.

This 'bundling' technique applied in other markets - such as word processing and Internet browsers.

Of course there are a number of antivirus vendors who also play in this market.

Becoming well known and establishing a firm market presence are companies like:

GriSoft - out of the Czech Republic

Sophos - in the United Kingdom

Panda Software - from Spain

Kaspersky - in Russia

SoftWin - in Romania

F-Secure - in Finland

Norman - in Norway

Arcabit - in Poland

VirusBuster - out of Hungary

and

AhnLab in South Korea.

It is not clear exactly where the industry is heading, but it is not doubted that everyone within this market faces a rapidly changing landscape. The amount of effort to find and provide fixes for viruses is staggering. Malicious programs are getting more complex and the number of them is increasing at an alarming rate. Many companies quickly find themselves without the resources to match efforts of those truly bent on creating havoc.

Some virus companies are getting of hundreds of new samples a day! Moreover, new viruses are getting "smarter" in that they propagate themselves quickly and they often hide themselves and are smart enough to move around in a system by renaming themselves in an effort to make it hard to remove them.