Anti Virus
Wednesday 6th September, 2006 09:27 Comments: 0
Previous Office releases introduced an API for Anti-Virus software to hook into the Office "File Open" process and scan a document that Office is opening. This is supported in Word 2003, Excel 2003, PowerPoint 2003 and Access 2003. This functionally, while superceded by the "disk access" scanners, which scan every file pulled from the disk, is a valuable scenario for customers, and one that Anti-Virus vendors and suppliers are requesting more and more.
- Disk access scanners have to scan ALL access to the disk, and this can impact system performance.
- Administrators have the tools and ability to lock down strictly what users can get onto their machines and often the only "perceived" source of viruses are Office documents (through email attachments etc.) and customers/administrators only want to scan those documents.
- Anti-virus vendors often have to ship with some of their most advanced heuristic (or prediction) checks OFF in "on access" scanners for performance reasons. With more selective scanning, for certain scenarios, the vendor can do more through scanning for specific files, like documents on open, with minimal impact, without having to penalize the user for all file access.
When virus software that is compatible with the Office 2003 anti-virus API is installed on the computer, the message "Virus Scanner(s) installed" appears at the bottom of the Macro Security dialog of the application.
It'd be interesting to know which vendors have their advanced heuristics disabled, I wonder if there's a list somewhere.
- Disk access scanners have to scan ALL access to the disk, and this can impact system performance.
- Administrators have the tools and ability to lock down strictly what users can get onto their machines and often the only "perceived" source of viruses are Office documents (through email attachments etc.) and customers/administrators only want to scan those documents.
- Anti-virus vendors often have to ship with some of their most advanced heuristic (or prediction) checks OFF in "on access" scanners for performance reasons. With more selective scanning, for certain scenarios, the vendor can do more through scanning for specific files, like documents on open, with minimal impact, without having to penalize the user for all file access.
When virus software that is compatible with the Office 2003 anti-virus API is installed on the computer, the message "Virus Scanner(s) installed" appears at the bottom of the Macro Security dialog of the application.
It'd be interesting to know which vendors have their advanced heuristics disabled, I wonder if there's a list somewhere.