>>In all the years I have run AV, I can only think of one time that malware got through. But I've seen it catch more malware than I can remember. In my book, that's a win.
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>I don't think I've had any kind of infection since maybe something in Win2000 when using Trend way way back.
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>We do routinely clean malware off machines using Symantec A/V when customers bring them in (we had one last week).
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>I think the A/V you use is a huge variable in this.

Quite true. The biggest problem is that no A/V software detects them all - so often times one A/V will catch a virus or trojan where another one won't. Of course it's foolish to run two A/V's on a machine at the same time because it eats up so much resources - but what you CAN do is have a good one installed, then every now and then run one of the free online scanners too. Then there is the mailware issue and sometimes something like Spybot Search & Destroy will find crap that A/V's wont so not a bad idea to scan with something like that too every now & then.


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>>>When you really need them, seat belts will probably function.
>>>
>>>When you really need it, AV often does not. In fact, the more serious the threat, the more likely AV won't work.