Re: Anti-virus for i5OS

[Joe Pluta <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

David Gibbs wrote:
> Well, yes and no.  AV software serves a useful role, IMO ... because
> sometimes it's hard to tell when code is actually going to be installed
> (which, imo, is a big problem in an of itself).  A few days ago, A
> co-worked loaned me a flash drive to move some software around.  As soon
> as I inserted the flash drive, the system recognized two devices ... the
> flash drive and a 'CD ROM'.  It then proceeded to install software that
> was on the 'CD ROM' automatically.  It didn't ask me if I wanted to
> install it, it just started to install it.
>
> This kind of thing is what AV software protects against.
>   
Yeah, but you're kind of sliding away from the topic, which is i5/OS.  I 
don't stick auto-run CDs and flash drives on my System i.  And frankly, 
this is a darned good argument to turn off that "feature" on your desktop.

But at the same time, I wouldn't hesitate to put not only anti-virus, 
but also system integrity software (I like Desktop Armor) on all of your 
desktops, especially since you can get high-quality packages for free.  
If there were an AntiVir equivalent for i5/OS, I might consider it, but 
then again, AV software tends to really chew cycles; I think I'd prefer 
locking down my machine so it didn't need it.

One of my clients has two partitions: a production and a development 
partition.  The production partition  is just about read-only for 
everything except customer data.

Joe