Posted by Andrew Neumann on Mon, Jul 06, 2009
The gloves have officially come off and I am ready to go toe to toe with what I once presumed as my ally, my Anti-Virus Software program. I am not ashamed to say that I have felt the sting of and have relived the horrors that are the result of, well, nothing more than the AV program doing what it has been told to do. I need to amend this statement by saying that the horrors are the result of my feeling that my AV software is up on a pedestal and should not be toyed with. Considering what and why the AV software is put in place to do, and by definition Anti-Virus Software is used to prevent, detect and remove malware, including computer viruses, worms and Trojan horses, the last thing that I would want to do is adjust the settings in such a way as to increase the possibility of letting one of the aforementioned critters infiltrate my PC or my network.
Well kiss my grits and call me Mel because I recently had an experience that required exactly just that, loosening the AV strings in order to let an application run free. Now I am not suggesting that you run out and disable your Anti-Virus software with absolute disregard for system security. What I am suggesting, as it was pointed out to me by a man of great patience and limitless knowledge, would be to research the issue and act on the information that you find, even if it means toying with your Anti-Virus Software.
Consider the following scenario.
Client ‘A' shells out major bucks for a software upgrade that will, among other things, work much faster than the current process that he has in place. Sounds like a great idea. However, when Client ‘A' has the application installed into his environment, not only is the performance less than what he expected but the speed of the application is putting him and his business in the ‘RED', literally. The answer to the riddle was nothing more than a few clicks of the mouse through Google waiting to hit me like a ball pine hammer between the eyes. How I missed it was that I was blinded by considering that the resolution to the issue could be addressed by loosening the belt on the AV software drawers. A colleague put the instance in perspective for me. He indicated that AV software serves a purpose, in a nutshell to ward off the demons that could potentially cripple your network. However, simply in the act of doing this, the software is sucking the systems ability to perform to its fullest potential - it just needs to be decided where to draw the line between performance loss and system security. Got a coin anyone?