Rising Free Antivirus RAV and a faulty CA update
I have reviewed the full Rising antivirus program before and found it to be an excellent antivirus for detecting more obscure viruses. In recent months, the company has released a new free antivirus program that competes with the likes of Free AVG and Avast. The main selling point of the RAV free antivirus is the fact that it is extremely similar to the full version. In fact, its almost as if the software company repackaged their full product and gave it the free antivirus badge. The main feature that the Rising antivirus includes is always on protection capabilities. The antivirus shield will constantly scan a windows system for malware with definition and heuristic based protection. The software also includes zero day protection. As far as I know there isn't a free antivirus that offers zero day or very fast updates to protect against the lastest virus threats. For example, free AVG will only check for updates once a day vs. their full product which will check for updates every 15 minutes. RAV free antivirus also includes an effective antispyware protection which is also lacking in other free antivirus programs. In addition, to all of these features, free RAV includes an email scanner and web defense protection that will protect a user online. While the software is provided by a foreign company it shouldn't be a concern. The free antivirus was awarded the virus bulletin 100 rating (virusbtn.com) and the the westcoast labs check mark rating. These companies are highly accredited antivirus auditing organizations and have placed their trust with Rising free antivirus.
This is the first time that this has happened to CA or computer associates. I reported about a year ago that a trend micro update caused computers to crash that was also due to a blotched update. However, the latest blunder affects all Windows XP computers running service pack 3 rather than just computers running the Trend Micro business antivirus. The CA antivirus update causes the antivirus product to label and quarantine essential windows files as viruses. If auto protect is on, this process may happen automatically. Knowing the majority of users including myself, we all have the tendency to just click ok on any virus detection notification thinking its legitimate. Upon deletion of the files Windows XP will fail to load. Thankfully, the company has re issued an update to fix the problem. However, many people will have to reinstall or attempt to rollback their windows operating system. I also think that this goes to show that antivirus companies need to do more to ensure the functionality and compatibility of their updates. Maybe a consortium of antivirus companies can be started to test compatibility on multiple computing system environments. This process should ideally mirror the Microsoft's patch testing and certification process.