What makes a security company improve or degrade their products?

RoboMan

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Within the years pass by, we've seen security companies take their failed products and basically re-built them from scratch in order to create what now is a great piece of program (such as Norton).

What do you think these companies went through in order to achieve the secret of success? Is it a new team? Research? User feedback? Maybe developers here can give clever answers, or maybe any of you guys have a clue :=)
 

RoboMan

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A direct insight for this question I might not have, since I am not a developer yet myself.
But I think I might have a good clue in this matter:
I would like to use BitDefender and Microsoft as an example:
I always have known that BD was a superior malware detective since I first discovered it in 02-03.
But for some strange reason, it's UI has always been buggy and sluggish, even to this day I would guess.
I cannot understand how such skilled developers cannot fix the same recurring bugs year in year out.
I mean everyone knows it and everyone talks about it in all forums also in all years.
And I feel MS has also struggled with this kind of dilemma since their first NT kernels,
which has kind of been a ghost in the machine that has followed them even into v8.1 which I am using today.
I simply cannot understand how it is possible?
If I ever learn to develop and understand cpu programming, debugging and disasembly,
I guess my OCD nature would never let those bugs through in the first place.
Sorry if longwinded....
I guess there must be a reason why such issues have not been resolved, as well as a reason why some companies did and upgraded their software. I wish hopefully anyone here has an answer.
 

ispx

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when you say company the first thing that comes to my mind is a business & any & every business is for profits, money, dirhams.

in the case of norton, i would say a magnanimous drop in sales & revenue probably woke them up from their slumber.

contrary to that a newer company like zemana has been forever having giveaways for zam & keep in mind only for zam.

zemana aint stupid, instead of having a few hundred beta testers for their R&D they are are now piggybacking real world users.

if you think zemana lacks at performance too bad, you got a free annual subscription from them so quit whining about zemana.

another very crucial change factor is as you said user feedback & a perfect example is microsoft.

microsoft's vista was a true overhaul of xp, while 7 was just a cosmetic surgery done to vista.

similarly 8 was a spanking new re-birth of the microsoft operating system but customer feedback forced microsoft to evolve 8.1

i would like to add one last factor that can make a company change their gameplan is a rival company / competition.

nokia thought it was the king of the gsm world until lg & samsung kicked nokia's rear end out of the global gsm smartphone circuit.

samsung too got carried away & thought it only had competition from apple until huawei & xiaomi took away a lot of their customers.

a worthy competitor taking away your market dominance is also a big wake-up call for any company / enterprise.
 

AtlBo

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Good question. I think more than anything it has to do with the limitations of computer languages combined with OS design limitations and then too the unknowns contained within the OSes. MS isn't very efficient when it comes to providing detailed information about their choices. Then they've been in the same boat as everyone else, so o_O. It would have helped I believe if they could have found some way to quantify or at least qualify their design choices however. I mean, how many research reports has MS released that anyone could find or that were cutting edge? Ummmmm....:rolleyes:

Languages have improved over the years (.NET capabilities for example). Now programmers can write more efficiently, where in the past hardware + software limitations must have been maddening to deal with with limited capabilities from the languages too. Then, all the development over the last 20 years (30+ years honestly) has happened in a whirlwind of computing change, making it very difficult to be up to date with the latest. Thankfully we have way more numbers-wise competent programmers now that 10+ or even 5+ years ago. So improving hardware + greater options for programmers (improved language options)=better performance->better security.

Things will continue to get better. Looks to me like we are headed into the dreary details now tho. Hold on, cause looks to me like things could get interesting on a good many levels LOL...:D
 
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RoboMan

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Interesting comments everybody. Regarding Microsoft i think the excessive unstoppable data collection on their OS was the key to improve their features and security, don't you think?
 
5

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Security soft companies are just like any other company with financial budgets, staff, operations, etc. There are a whole range of business issues that influence software development - first and foremost, of which, are money, staffing and the current state of technology. Those are essentially the same limiting problems faced by most technology companies and are different for each security soft vendor. Each security soft vendor has its own unique set of challenges in improving its products. There is no single answer to your question as the reasons vary widely.

I can tell you that most vendors do their best to improve their products with the resources that they have at their immediate disposal. Vendors are not negligent or lax, which is what a lot of users seem to think; "There was a bypass video posted two months ago - why isn't it fixed ? Your product suxx !" Everybody expects things to be fixed yesterday and it just doesn't work that way. Sometimes there are circumstances that result in things not being fixed for a long (maybe very) long time. And there are things that a particular vendor just might not ever fix for a lot of reasons - whether end users agree with those decisions or not. Microsoft does it all the time, but if it is AV vendor X, then "Your AV suxx !" is the reaction.

Massive user ignorance is a big part of the problem too, but I won't go into that here.
 
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RoboMan

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Security soft companies are just like any other company with financial budgets, staff, operations, etc. There are a whole range of business issues that influence software development - first and foremost, of which, are money, staffing and the current state of technology. Those are essentially the same limiting problems faced by most technology companies and are different for each security soft vendor. Each security soft vendor has its own unique set of challenges in improving its products. There is no single answer to your question as the reasons vary widely.

I can tell you that most vendors do their best to improve their products with the resources that they have at their immediate disposal. Vendors are not negligent or lax, which is what a lot of users seem to think; "There was a bypass video posted two months ago - why isn't it fixed ? Your product suxx !" Everybody expects things to be fixed yesterday and it just doesn't work that way. Sometimes there are circumstances that result in things not being fixed for a long (maybe very) long time. And there are things that a particular vendor just might not ever fix for a lot of reasons - whether end users agree with those decisions or not. Microsoft does it all the time, but if it is AV vendor X, then "Your AV suxx !" is the reaction.

Massive user ignorance is a big part of the problem too, but I won't go into that here.
Good response, thank you. I strongly believe user feedback instead of massive public commenting "your software sucks" is much more appreciated always. I think, as users need to send more feedback to their software programmers, vendors should as well communicate with their users, maybe explaining why X issues have not or won't be fixed, or if it will. Communication on both sides is a great tool to improve every business product, not only antivirus.
 
5

509322

Good response, thank you. I strongly believe user feedback instead of massive public commenting "your software sucks" is much more appreciated always. I think, as users need to send more feedback to their software programmers, vendors should as well communicate with their users, maybe explaining why X issues have not or won't be fixed, or if it will. Communication on both sides is a great tool to improve every business product, not only antivirus.

There are a lot of issues on a whole range of matters and, while it might seem like nothing but a common sense fix is required, it is never that simple. On-going active communication is really only requested by the security soft geeks. Yes, communication can always be better, but most users never bother to read or check-up on a single thing. It seems the most effective communications take place on the forums directly interacting with users.
 

jamescv7

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First is the budget cause every time there are so many tools and other equipment that can help improve drastically their detection gathering capabilities, which why they invest in numerous and gigantic servers and AI robots for faster accuracy.

The feedback of users are sometimes least important cause usually either it's already a part of a process or no plans yet to incorporate, remember that the process can be complex to avoid problems on their current detection mechanism.

Another thing is partnership which will make a process more in-depth in accessing tools for faster and more comprehensive in detection, sometimes it's all about data gathering of samples as possible cause that is the job to provide quality of product to every customers when delivered updates.
 

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