Updates too few and very far in-between

[Guest]

Hello-

I am aware this is beta software as well as it only having a small group of
software engineers involved. Having said this, in the faster world of today,
the signature files are slow to be updated. It seems as if they are 10-14
days in occurrence. My other virus/spyware programs update daily if not
several (Grisoft's AVG, for example) times daily.

Right now I am using the brand new updated MS Antispyware Beta yet the sig
file is still dated 11/20/2005. It is now 12/01/2005..

Also - even when it does update - there is always a missing file #
in-between; i.e., changing from 5761 to 5763 instead of 5761 to 5762 - even
tho' I have it set for auto-update daily and I also manually try to update
when I get ready to do a scan to ensure I have the latest sig file. {file #s
above are for example only}

This issue needs to be resolved before this program comes out of beta mode.

Respectfully,
Steve...

 

[Bill Sanderson]

Definition updates have been about 1 to a week, with an occasional double up
when things are hot or a false positive is unusually bad.

One is definitely due tonight.

Current definition number is 5779. Definitions for Microsoft Antispyware
are always the odd numbers--skipping a number between sets. Microsoft
supplies definitions to Sunbelt software's Counterspy product under a
contractual obligation inherited as part of the purchase of Giant software.

 

[JoeM]

First Most AV programs update once a month. Ad-aware updates their spyware
program about every 2 weeks.

 

[Guest]

Nope.. I'm a beta tester for Lavasoft (Ad_Aware) Def files and it's been
averaging one every five days. Grisoft (AVG) does it several times a day..
Avast! does it at least once a day. I have to admit Webroot is longer, but
is an exception as it still catches more, even rootkits. That's why more
"off-brand" AVs (as opposed to Norton, McAfee, etc) catch more viri.. Unless
you subscribe to an "enterprise" version at many $$$$ a year and then the big
commercial brands do it every 4 *hours*... for THOSE customers.

Steve...

 

[Bill Sanderson]

Actually, with Symantec's corporate version, they supply an FTP script which
you can schedule at your choice of times. I have it pulling in definitions
hourly within working hours in offices that use it. It's a bit of a
kluge--you just pull in the current file--there's no check for whether it
has changed--but if something is hot and they put out an out-of-band update,
you can get it quickly. I believe other large vendors--Trend Micro, for
example, have similar mechanisms.

I suspect that you can even make this work for individual client retail
Norton installs. I did that at one place I worked, as I recall, but it
seems to me that the defs were infrequent--maybe weekly.

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