In Mid April I wrote about the problem of security products actually hurting your security rather then helping as they are supposed to. BusinessWeekOline have an article that talks about a forthcoming report from the Yankee Group detailing how Anti-Virus/Spyware products together with other security products like Firewalls have had more flaws found in recent times then Microsoft’s own products. To even compete with Microsoft with regard to security flaws is amazing in itself, but when you consider that these products are actually supposed to protect you from external compromise it becomes a horrendous problem.
Security experts have long suggested to clients, that being protected by a current and actively updating Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware and firewall product is part and parcel of staying secure online (for Windows users anyway, since Mac and Linux are mostly unaffected by such problems), but those very products themselves are in some instances being used as the attack vector used to get into your computers. A very dangerous state of affairs that requires an immediate response from the security vendors. It can’t be long before a company finds themselves beset by malicious software which was caused by a failure from a security product and that security company may find themselves in court being asked to explain themselves and pay damages.
