Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Free AV for Belgium?

Yesterday, Phillippe De Coene made a proposal to give free anti-virus and security software to the Belgian citizens as a service. You can read more on the website www.veiligecomputer.be .
As I like the original proposal some of the practical stuff mentioned by Phillippe seems to me completely unrealistic. To use ISP's to provide free AV tools is an idea which is realised already by most of the Belgian ISP's. I particularly liked the idea to give AV for free to the Belgian citizens however how would you do that: Buy 2 million copies of McAfee for Belgium? His proposal to nearly create 'another' (free) package by the help of our universities is very naive ! It's completely impossible. To stop computers from coming on the network (another step in his proposal) without anti-virus is the general idea from what the AV industry tries to realise in corporate networks... I know how to implement this in a corporate network. It is theoretical possible to do this in this situation but it's not evident. Do you think that a normal home user wants this always? You are touching his or her 'free thinking' isn't it? A human or in this case a pc user must have the possibility to choose. And what about the aspect of support of the product. The main problem with every software package is support! How does he think to realise that? Changing the BIPT into a normal CERT is the only concrete and realistic idea I've heard in the proposal. Maybe he wanted the attention by the press just to realise that last part.