The End Is Near For Paid Antivirus On PCs

This was the premise of an interesting article by Mathew Schwarz in an Information Week article on June 23. http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/antivirus/231000191 . Eric Domage, manager of western European security research and consulting for IDC, stated, “This is a highly commoditized sector. It used to be a market, but now it's a commodity--look at what Microsoft is now doing for free."

The freemium market has worked for several vendors. Microsoft created a bit of a disruptive event when they unleashed their free Microsoft Security Essentials. Excluding trial basis programs, www.download.com has approximately 60 free antivirus downloads on their site.

Some of this may be a definition issue. Antivirus is only a small portion of “malware”. The masses use the phrases interchangeably. Antivirus vendors hope that people will migrate up to a paid antivirus product or an internet security suite.

At the same time, traditional viruses are not the problem. Most major security vendors have written though leader ship whitepapers on internet threats. They detail the most current threats and how the battle has moved out to the cloud and there is more danger from getting infected while surfing the internet.

The larger vendors, on the business side of the fence, promote a multi-layered approach that begins with the cloud and often ends at the desktop. Or increasingly, they utilize a cloud solution for their desktops, road warriors, and mobile devices.

"McAfee and Symantec have decided to escape this market," said Domage in the article. CA decided to sell much of its security portfolio to UpData partners in June http://www.crn.com/news/security/229500801/ca-to-sell-antivirus-business.htm

A new market for these vendors is mobile devices using Symbian (shrinking) and Android operating systems. This includes tablets as well as smart phones. Some of the security vendors have a free product. Others have incorporated it into other technology security solutions. Those offering a free product often market a premium version. Trend Micro, Kaspersky, AVG Technologies, F-Secure, and McAfee, for example, all offer some kind of mobile security solution. some of them free.

In the denouement, while the end may be near for paid antivirus on the desktop, threats still exist. The battlefield has moved more extensively out to the internet. Protection is still essential. It costs companies to develop solutions. They need to continue to invest and these investments have to be recouped.

Below is a non-comprehensive set of links to some vendors providing security solutions for mobile devices.

http://www.f-secure.com/en_US/products/mobile/, http://usa.kaspersky.com/products-services/home-computer-security/mobile-security, http://us.trendmicro.com/us/products/personal/mobile-security-for-android/, http://home.mcafee.com/Store/ , http://www.avg.com/us-en/antivirus-for-android