We can all agree about the importance of running antivirus software; no enterprise-class organization would operate without some kind of anti-malware to protect operations. However, as all of us who use antivirus know, this protection does not come without a cost. Antivirus frequently uses a lot of system resources, such as processor and memory. Many users will attempt to disable antivirus when they suspect it is slowing down their computers. At an operational level, this processing time required by antivirus software represents a hidden cost, and when extrapolated to hundreds of servers or thousands of workstations, is a sizable cost.
Read the following paper which discusses antivirus performance and resource utilization, and ranks the major AV vendors: http://www.anti-malware-test.com/content/antivirus-performance-test-february-2010
This week’s case study group should summarize these findings, provide any insight on whether or not these statistics have changed since 2010, and facilitate a discussion on this topic.