Do you remember “Comical Ali”, also known as Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the Iraqi Minister of Information for the brief duration of the second Gulf War. He was famous for bombastic quotes such as “Our initial assessment is that they will all die” and bald-faced denials like “I triple guarantee you, there are no American soldiers in Baghdad.” (One of his final remarks before retiring).

I was reminded of him just a few days ago when Symantec chairman and CEO, John Thompson, was reported as saying “The problem of worms and viruses is ‘solved’.”

He must be suffering from some anti-virus information disorder. Admittedly he didn’t say “I triple guarantee you that that you’ll never get infected by a virus or worm again.” In fact, in case I’m accused of quoting John Thompson out of context, he went on to say that Symantec intended to focus on some quite new (for Symantec) areas of security technology. John is trying to reposition Symantec as your friendly neighbourhood IT Security company rather than “AV for the masses”, but nevertheless that’s no excuse…

Let me introduce you to quite a different headline, which I had been saving for a rainy day, but hit the press a mere 10 days before John Thompson made his outrageous statement. It cries out to be used here:

FBI study shows 97 percent of organizations have anti-virus software installed, yet 65 percent have been affected by a virus attack at least once during the previous 12 months.

John, I don’t mean to be rude, but your AV technology is scandalously ineffective.

The only plausible explanation for you making the statement that you made is that you have been briefed about one or more of the software authentication companies; AppSense, Bit9, Savant Protection and SecureWave, that take the correct technical approach and actually do stop viruses and all other forms of malware. Yes indeed, the problem of worms and viruses is ‘solved’, but not by Symantec.