I make my hopefully-humorous play on Mcafee’s current HW101 billboards to make a point: most of today’s desktop security solutions bring their host computers to a grinding halt. In fact, sluggish performance becomes the norm. And irritating “status balloons” pop up on the screen with great regularity.

I’d rather have most viruses than run a modern ’security suite’!

So how did we get here and what can we do about it?

We got here riding the wave of paranoia that the massive worm outbreaks of early this century spawned. Then the tragic 9/11 events rightfully ratcheted security thinking up, and even gave birth to the concept of “cyber-terror” – whatever that is. And viruses became “polymorphic” and hackers became “hardened criminals” operating in rings. Etc.

These threats were and are valid concerns, but one of their immediate effects was that, during 2001-2005, we handed “security” a virtual carte blanch. We became willing to sacrifice performance and other “-ilities” in order to protect ourselves. Symantec found itself able to raise prices and sales volumes simultaneously – a reverse price elasticity. Vendor heaven.

And so there was little counter-force to making desktop security suites “more powerful.” We have to be safe, right? Thus began feature creep in desktop products, which – coupled by an ever-increasing library of “malware signatures” – sucked up more resources from the host computer with every release.

If you don’t think that our endpoint machines are enchained by the security software running on them, try uninstalling it and running like that for a day or two. It’s like a new CPU core was added. It’s great. (It’s kinda like Mac and Linux users feel every day. )

So how does a person remedy this situation? Well I outlined here some very effective things that you can do, most of which are free. These are a definite good start, especially #4 (don’t run endpoints with administrator privileges turned on).

But how about turning off/un-installing the endpoint security? Generally a bad idea. However, there are situations where it can work quite well:

1. You have a good gateway security product installed between you and the internet, and the machine will always run behind it.

2. You run a Mac or Linux desktop.

3. You are a power user and can use your experience and lightweight tools (e.g., WinClam) to provide the protection that you need.

4. You are on Windows, but running without admin privileges, have the “Internet Zone” on your browser cranked up to “full safe,” and are not in the habit of opening email attachments. (Note: I do not recommend this mode of operation, but often do it myself – at least before I went back to a Mac! )

Another thing that you can consider if you’re running a “heavy” security product is running a more nimble one. For example, both Kaspersky and NOD32 are far more respectful of machine resources than Symantec or Mcafee.

And if you’re worried that moving away from a “big brand” player will make your machine less secure, don’t! Instead, check out our AV Fight Club for the real story on security software efficacy….