Antivirus Subscription Prices Climb
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Price hikes may be designed to convince you to upgrade to an all-out Internet security suite.
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Blog: Report says click fraud rate is up due to increased use of botnets to automate the clicking on ads.
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A new Web site helps consumers protect themselves from excessive fees that can drive up the price of a home.
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The Story: Even when there?s good news on the security front, there always seems to be bad news to balance it out. And while we think this news is important for you to know, it?s not an exception to the Good News/Bad News Syndrome.[ Slideshow: 2007's top underreported tech stories ]                                                    The use of e-mail-borne executable virus attachments dropped sharply in 2007. In particular, spammers have dialed back their use of so-called image spam, which tricks filters by embedding text within an attached image.According to IronPort Systems, outbreaks of viruses embedded in e-mail attachments totaled 860 in 2006 and 844 in 2005. But as of mid-October 2007, attacks totaled just 360. Dave Mayer, an IronPort product manager, said it?s likely that outbreaks will total 450 by the end of the year ? a drop of 47 percent. It appears that evildoers are moving on: ?Traditional viruses have been around for years, a long enough time to harden defenses against malicious attachments,? he said.Earlier in the year, IronPort, Symantec, and McAfee all noted that image spam, which appeared about two years ago, is waning, now that defenses have improved. Filters have now gotten better at scanning the contents of the attachments, leading spammers to link instead to images elsewhere.Mayer, whose company specializes in e-mail and Web security, says spammers are now placing those images on free photo-sharing sites ? the ones people use to send vacation photos to friends and family ? and embedding links to those images in their junk messages. These are difficult for spam filters to block because the same sites are used for legitimate photos as well.But as the abuse of e-mail attachments has declined, other types of threats have escalated. For example, outbreaks of macro viruses, aimed at Office-type applications, have risen by 50 percent to 60 percent while URL viruses climbed by at least 250 percent this year, IronPort found.The Bottom Line: It often seems as if the number of threats that you must be on guard against only increases, stretching your resources past the limits. But the truth is that threat profiles change over time, and some things you may be investing in are no longer as great a threat or are now handled by the tools you have in place. So, although you can?t get lax about security, you can focus more on newer threats.Complete list of 2007 underreported tech stories: 1.? Java is becoming the new Cobol 2.? Sun Microsystems is back in the game 3.? Hackers take aim at Mac OS X 4.? There are some threats you can worry less about 5.? Companies may have found a way around H-1B visa limits 6.? Open source?s new commercial strategy 7.? End-to-end Ethernet finally arrives 8.? Blade servers arrive for the masses 9.? BI is dead; long live BI 10. Balance of power shifts to software buyers
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Internet security may be priceless, but people who want a safer web browser with their older versions of Windows will pay $239. Until last month, the software giant&#39;s security-challenged Internet
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(InfoWorld) - It took Michael Kelly just minutes to buy McAfee Inc.'s software. But getting the anti-virus vendor to stop charging his credit card was another matter altogether. McAfee is on the vanguard of a new trend in the security software industry: selling software as a service that is automatically billed each year. McAfee began automatically renewing customers in 2001, but over the past year the practice has become much more common, as Symantec Corp. and Microsoft Corp., with its new Windows Live OneCare products, have adopted the automatic renewals. The vendors say that these programs are good for consumers. As many as two-thirds of antivirus users postpone their subscription renewal, leaving PCs unprotected from the latest attacks, they say. But as Kelly discovered after spending more than half an hour trying to drop his McAfee antivirus subscription, the automatic renewals have a downside too. "The best practice has turned into the one that's best for the company and not for the customer," said Kelly, who blogged about his problems in early October. Kelly is chief executive officer of Techtel Corp., a market research firm in Emeryville, California. Complaints like Kelly's may start piling up as more PC users become enrolled in automatic update programs. In early November 2005 Symantec Corp. began enrolling North American customers in automatic renewal by default, and it has now expanded the practice into Europe. By next year the program, called Ongoing Protection, will be worldwide, said Javed Hasan, senior director of product marketing with Symantec. The vendors have taken steps to prevent their customers from being surprised by automatic renewals. Like Microsoft and McAfee, Symantec's sign-up forms make it clear that online customers are entering an automatic renewal program, and the vendors send a notification e-mail to customers before they place the new charges on their credit cards. So far "the large majority of customers" are allowing Symantec to auto-renew their subscriptions, Hasan said. "We are very happy with the results that we're seeing now." While automatic renewals can be convenient, they will make software license management more complicated for small businesses that are not cutting volume license deals, said Josh Kaplan, national marketing director for Rescuecom Corp., a computer services company in Syracuse, New York. Companies will need to keep tabs on subscriptions to make sure that they are not charged subscription fees for PCs that are no longer in use, and the automatic renewals will inject some complexity into any efforts to switch security software vendors, he said. Kaplan says that many of his customers have been caught unprepared for the switch to automatic renewals, although this is not necessarily a bad thing. "I have had customers who tell me that their antivirus is expired, and who are actually renewed," he said. "I haven't had any angry customers yet regarding that, but I've had quite a few surprised ones." Online customers are being registered in these auto-renewal programs by default, though they won't be able to do this in some countries, where the practice is outlawed. Customers who purchase products at retail, or who have the security software pre-installed on their PC may not be entered into auto-renewal. In North America, for example, there is no way for McAfee, Microsoft and Symantec customers to opt out of the program during the online sign-up process. But both McAfee and Symantec offer users a way to keep charges from automatically showing up on their credit cards one year later. When Symantec customers sign up for security products the company sends them a link to a cancellation form they can complete to opt out of auto-renewals. In North America, McAfee customers can call 1-800-791-4577. Things are not so simple with OneCare. Customers who have purchased the product online have only one way to opt out of automatic renewals: they can cancel their subscriptions altogether. To do this, customers must call OneCare's customer support number: 1-866-663-2273. One year into Ongoing Protection, Symantec still has some bugs in the cancellation process. Customers who don't save their initial e-mail with the link to the cancellation form are supposed to be able to drop the service on Symantec's customer account portal . But because of a glitch in the system, Symantec is now falsely notifying new customers that they "do not have any products or services with automatic renewal turned on," even though they are signed up for automatic renewals by default. It takes about a month after purchase for the portal to register the fact that customers are enrolled in automatic renewals, a company spokeswoman said. "There's just a little bit of a lag time there, unfortunately." The company expects to iron out this bug within the month, she added. Selling software as a service is nothing new -- the industry has been slowly adopting this model for several years now -- but security software is a little different, said John Palfrey, executive director of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. "Companies in this business have a special obligation not to violate the same rules that they are accusing others of violating," he said. "I don't think any different rules should apply to a large antivirus provider than should apply to someone offering a free screen saver," he added. Michael Kelly thinks renewing customers should be given the same kind price breaks that are commonly used to entice new customers, but despite his experience, he still likes the idea in principle. "The benefits are good, as long as they maintain good two-way communication and make it easy for you to cut it off." (Additional reporting by Narasu Rebbapragada, senior associate editor at PC World US)
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Anticipating an avalanche of smartphones and PDA&#39;s during the gift-giving season, Trend Micro today released a free trial of its mobile anti-virus (AV) product.
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McAfee this week plans to announce an add-on for its enterprise antivirus products to offer increased protection against spyware. Users of McAfee VirusScan Enterprise Edition versions 7.1 or 8.0i next month
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Price hikes may be designed to convince you to upgrade to an all-out Internet security suite. Troublesome Trojan horses, virulent worms, nasty viruses--sometimes it may seem like the Internet exists just to let the bad guys attack your PC.
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The number of attempted attacks by computer viruses rocketed in the first half of the year, according to a report published today.
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Trend Micro, a rival anti-virus firm to Symantec, made an announcement stating that it will offer its anti-virus and anti-spam security software for free to users until June, 2005.
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(InfoWorld) - Earlier this month the Business Software Alliance (BSA) upped the ante from $200,000 to $1 million for anyone who turns in a company that is illegally circumventing software licensing agreements. BSA members include a who's who of the software and hardware industry, including Apple, Adobe, Dell, HP, Microsoft, SAP, and dozens more. The bounty for uncovering cheaters is not just a marketing ploy. The Association can, in fact, put some bite into uncovering cheaters, according to Kris Barker, CEO of Express Metrix. Express Metrix is a company that does hardware and software auditing to help companies keep in compliance with their software licenses. "Most software licensing agreements include a provision that allows a software vendor or its agent, which can be the BSA, to do an audit of end-user agreements," said Barker. The BSA increased the reward as software piracy continues to grow. According to IDC, U.S. software vendors lost $7.3 billion in 2006 as a result of piracy. However, turning in the man or woman in the cubicle next to you is not how an informer can earn the top reward. The BSA has 22 terms and conditions that must be met before the $1 million payoff is awarded. The rewards are based on sums received in out-of-court settlements, which is the most common way a company avoids any more punitive prosecution for piracy. In order to earn the $1 million, a company would have to settle out of court with the BSA for anywhere between $10,000,001 to $15,000,000. The terms and conditions also state, that "no reward is payable unless the BSA pursues a case and, as a direct result of the information provided by you, receives a monetary payment from the reported organization." A far more modest reward, up to $5,000, is given to anyone whose information leads to a settlement of $15,000 to $100,000. Despite many restrictions, BSA says that since 2005, out-of-court settlements have totaled $22 million. Another requirement of the terms and conditions states that an employee who has installed unlicensed software is not eligible for a reward unless "you were directed by your supervisor to do so." The rewards are part of a larger BSA campaign, which is appropriately titled, "Blow the Whistle."
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Six Apart and LiveJournal combine to boast 6.5 million users and a growing business. Also: Microsoft unveils antivirus software.... Canada may stop internet drug sales to America.... and more.
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Antivirus vendor may pay $13 billion for the storage software company.
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(InfoWorld) - Security software is mandatory for enterprises facing an Internet community of aggressive hackers and criminals. But enterprises shouldn't feel locked into deals with their security vendors, a Gartner analyst said. Under the right circumstances, switching vendors may make financial sense, said Peter Firstbrook, research director with Gartner. And with security vendors making a gross profit margin of 60 percent, enterprises may have more leverage when renegotiating deals, he said. "These guys [security vendors] are pretty fat and happy right now," said Firstbrook, who spoke at Gartner's IT Security Summit in London Tuesday. "They've got a very healthy profit margin. Don't feel sad for your antivirus vendor or your antivirus sales rep." Oddly, the antivirus security software market is mature, but softwareÂ costs aren't going down, Firstbrook said. The major security vendors aren't worried about losing clients because customers believe that changing products would be costly, he said. Before switching, IT managers should think about the complexity of rolling out new software. The companies best situated to make a change are those confident in their abilities to distribute software, test new products, and educate users, Firstbrook said. When slugging it out in negotiations, enterprises can do several things to ensure they get the best deal. First, companies should get quotes from a number of vendors and not be afraid to play one vendor off against another, Firstbrook said. Perpetual licenses are good, but organizations should remember that they can only negotiate a price once. Enterprises should also aim for rich packages that include home user licenses and some support, Firstbrook said. Licenses for desktops and e-mail security services should be calculated on a per-seat basis, but server license costs should be based on number of CPUs, Firstbrook said. Companies should not increase their seat count merely to meet a vendor's price list. Gartner expects an increasing number of security functions to be incorporated into single software packages, Firstbrook said. "I think that over time, vulnerability assessment, patch management, software configuration management will all merge with our antivirus software so we have one view of the security status of a PC, and if it's broken we can update it," Firstbrook said. Â
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SAN FRANCISCO  - The number of new viruses and worms aimed at Microsoft Corp.'s  ubiquitous Windows operating system rose 400 percent between January and June from the same year-earlier period, leading computer security company Symantec said on Sunday.
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What is this thing you call heuristics? Antivirus software is getting worse at protecting users from new threats, according to two reports which found malware authors are getting better at disguising their creations.â¦