Development Of Anti Virus Software

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Introduction

With the rapid development of Internet technology, the Internet has been all over every corner of the world. In the last decade, the pioneers of the industry (such as Microsoft) seem to focus on the technology, the network's ease of use and flexibility while ignoring the network security. The network security technology has become emergent information technology in the vacuum, leading network security personnel need. Primary threat for most computers is the threats of the different types of computer viruses.

My major is Information System Security; my study and research are generally focus on the computer security and the different threats of the network and computers. Next couples of months I will begin to do my dissertation, both of the articles I chose are focus on the Network Security and Computer viruses, in my research it will provide me some valuable information and data. This is may reason why I choose these two papers.

Generally, the computer virus is a small type of computer program; then it can copy themselves to other computers. Compare with other programs, it can destroy to the operating system and files.

In this paper, I will try my best to explain the details of the two articles.

Analysis Details

Literature Review

In Coulthard & Vuori’s research it provides some Literature as the past study:

Bridwell and Tibbett [1] (Bridwell, L, M. and Tibbett, p.400, 2007) conducted a survey of the numbers of computer viruses, they argued: "Likelihood of a company experiencing a computer virus has doubled each year for the past five years"

Banes (Banes, 2001) conducted a survey to analyze the numbers of computer virus. Banes said: increased level of virus and worm activity around Easter time.

The data published by Sophos (2000)"only 6 percent of the viruses circulating in the wild are script viruses, yet these account for over one third of all infections"

The Literature plays a significant role in their research. The literature review give some evidence to their research objectives. The Literature also provides the background of the computer viruses and gives more details of the computer viruses.

There is no Literature Review in Sherif & Gilliam’s research. Their research is an experiment, the literature review is unnecessary. The consequence of the experiment will support their point and prove the conclusion.

Objectives

The similarity of objectives: Both of researches are talk about the computer security and the computer virus. Both of them have the similar idea of computer virus.

Sherif & Gilliam (Sherif & Gilliam, 2003) conducted an experiment to test the anti-virus software with the different types of operating system platform, the anti-virus software is divided into four different types to evaluate, and then compare the different function in different OS platforms are compared.

Coulthard & Vuori (Coulthard & Vuori, 2002) conducted a research about different types of computer virus; the researches especially analyze the four main types of computer virus: "Boot virus, File virus, Script virus and the Macintosh virus" (Coulthard & Vuori, 2002).

Methodology

Sherif & Gilliam focused on the experiment of the anti-virus software on different platforms. Through the experiment test, they will choose the appropriate anti-virus software to JPL [2] and NASA [3] environment. In the introduction, it explained that the update of the anti-virus software is one of the most important parts of the anti-virus software, without update the computer will without protection (Sherif & Gilliam, 2003). In other words, the existence of anti-virus software does not make sense. The NCS group did an evaluation to find the needs of JPL and NASA (Sherif& Gilliam, 2003). They had four products will evaluated in DOS [4] /Windows [5] and MAC [6] , in the future there will be three products participate the final evaluation to the servers and they named the four products: Package a [7] , Package B [8] , Package C [9] , Package D [10] (Sherif & Gilliam, 2003).

Coulthard & Vuori focused and analysis about the numbers of viruses from May 1996 to May 2011.The analysis focused on the boot, file, macro and script viruses. The data resource was comes from publicly available lists published by Virus Bulletin (2001) and Wild list Organization [11] (Coulthard & Vuori, 2002).

Findings

Sherif & Gilliam (Sherif & Gilliam, 2003) argued: the experiment depends on JPL and NASA to analysis the ways of anti-viruses and how to protect the computers. According to the result of the experiment Package A get the highest marks in all tested platform accepts the MAC platform where Package B scored the highest. In the experiment Package A and Package B are closely to the MAC platform and a single-solution vendor for anti-virus was preferred. Package A selected as the best choice for JPL and NASA. In the JPL and NASA the anti-virus software should provide the possible comprehensive protection to the JPL and NASA platform, especially the backup of the files before attempting a repair. The other main aspect to the JPL and NASA platform is the anti-viruses should automatically update the database and software then more effectively detect the latest virus and threats.

Coulthard & Vuori (Coulthard& Vuori, 2002) conducted a research of the number of computer virus.

Figure 1 Total number of viruses

Source: Coulthard & Vuori’s research

Between May 1996 and Sep 1998 the number of computer viruses with a small fluctuation, there was no signification growing/dropping of the number of computer viruses. However after Sep 1998 with a significant fluctuations the amount of computer viruses growing rapidly, especially in Jan 2001 reach the highest point approximately 24000.

In the research, Coulthard & Vuori focus on the four types of computer viruses: boot, file, Macro Script.

Figure 2 Number of different types of viruses

Source: Source: Coulthard & Vuori’s research

The graph illustrates the number of computer viruses between May 1996 to May 2001. According to the graph, the number of boot viruses become less and less, in May 2001 it was already closer to 0. With the passage of the time, the file viruses and Script virus growing rapidly between May 1999 and May 2001, especially for the number of file viruses, in May 2001 it was reach the highest point approximately 24000. The Macro viruses just rely on the low version of Microsoft office to destroy the office document files. In recent decade, with the updated of the Microsoft office software the number of Macro viruses similar to the boot viruses become less and less.

Limitation

There is no explanation of limitation in Sherif & Gilliam’s research. In my point of view, there are some limitations in their works. During the limited time and limited budget they only do the basic research on different types of anti-virus. In Coulthard & Vuori’s research the author explained a variety of limitations: Firstly, the statistic used in the analysis is freely and publicly available. Secondly, the means of distribution of the virus did not include all routes of virus transmission, the data is incomplete.

Conclusion

The center of the two articles is on computer security, but two articles focus on different part of computer virus.

In Sherif & Gilliam’s research mostly depends on JPL and NASA to discuss the way how to choose good anti-virus software to the workstation. In the experiment the anti-virus software in accordance with the different platforms divided into four categories was tested (Sherif & Gilliam, 2003). Finally, the score of Package A is the highest in all of the categories, the best choice to the PC and MAC workstation which works in JPL and NASA (Sherif & Gilliam, 2003).

In Coulthard & Vuori’s research, the authors did a research to analysis the changes of different types of computer virus. From the research we can learn that approximately 2 decades ago the boot sector virus was popular, some virus could even destroy the hardware (Coulthard & Vuori, 2002). However, between 2000 and 2007 the file virus was rampant, it could destroy user’s documents and sometimes the user could not work properly (Coulthard & Vuori, 2002).

In my point of view, both of the articles are good to study. Both the paper focus on the research objectives. However, in Coulthard & Vuori’s research, they just analysis the changes of computer virus from 1996 to 2001, although the analysis could provide more details of computer viruses, there is no enough evidence or reasons to support the consequence of their research, why the computer viruses growing rapidly? Why some types of computer viruses become less and less. Coulthard & Vuori need to provide more evidence and collect more data to certify the consequence of the research.

With the rapid growing of computer viruses the computer security become a serious issue, pay attention to the computer security issue and computer viruses. For further research of the computer viruses, both articles would be useful. This analysis examines a critical analysis and a show of some useful information for further studies.