Imagine that your office building was on fire, and you called the fire department, only to be told, "Please wait there while we invent a new method to fight the kind of fire you have."

You'd be furious! You'd expect the firefighters to rush to your building immediately, ready to fight whatever kind of fire they found.

Unfortunately, anti-virus services are forced into a scenario that no firefighter would accept: "We have to invent new defenses every day." Anti-virus software can predict and prevent some never-before-seen viruses. But all too often, a new virus can spread unchecked while software vendors develop and distribute a new "signature" file that can match the virus and kill it.

By Brian Livingston at Datamation.

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