Traditional Antivirus: The Known Approach

Traditional antivirus software, the foundation of digital defence for many years, primarily employs signature-based detection. This method relies on identifying malware through a database of known signatures. While this approach is effective against widespread, identified viruses, it faces challenges in detecting new, modified, or previously unseen malware.

Benefits of Traditional Antivirus:

1. Proven Effectiveness Against Known Threats: traditional antivirus is highly effective at detecting and neutralising malware that has been previously identified and catalogued in its signature database.
   
   
2. Straightforward Operation: with its reliance on signatures, traditional antivirus offers a straightforward approach to malware detection, making it user-friendly and easy to manage for individuals and businesses alike.
   
   
3. Cost-Effectiveness: many traditional antivirus solutions are ‘add-ons’ and built-in to other products. Therefore, traditional antivirus can provide a basic level of protection without any financial investment.

Limitations of Traditional Antivirus:

1. Inability to Address Zero-Day Attacks: traditional antivirus struggles to protect against zero-day attacks, which exploit unknown vulnerabilities before they can be patched or a signature is created, leaving systems exposed to new threats.
   
   
2. Lack of Behavioural Analysis: unlike next-generation antivirus, traditional solutions lack behavioural analysis capabilities, making them unable to detect malware based solely on suspicious behaviour or anomalies in system operation.
   
   
3. Dependency on Regular Updates: the effectiveness of traditional antivirus heavily relies on frequent updates to its malware signature database. If the software is not updated regularly, its ability to detect and prevent attacks decreases, posing a risk to security.

Limited to Malware Detection: traditional antivirus often focuses narrowly on malware detection and removal, without offering additional layers of security, such as phishing protection, network attack defence, or encryption, which are increasingly necessary in today’s complex cyber threat landscape.