On November 8th Jim Allchin, the co-president of the Platform Products and Services Group at Microsoft said that the new lockdown features of Vista are good enough that he could let his seven-year old son use it without antivirus software installed.

Honestly, he doesn’t have an antivirus system on his machine. His machine is locked down with parental controls, he can’t download things unless it’s to the places that I’ve said that he cold do, and I’m feeling totally confident about that.

Of course the media and bloggers everywhere jumped all over this claim, with one prominent security analyst even suggesting that this might be true as long as everyone using Vista was a seven-year-old. And this of course is true, if every machine was locked down to the degree that Allchin’s son’s is locked down, viruses would be very challenged indeed. Allchin later clarified his statement saying:

…most users will use some form of antivirus software, and that will be appropriate for their scenarios. In fact, Windows Security Center, a great feature in Windows Vista, specifically encourages the use of antivirus software.

Unfortunately for those that manage PCs, most cannot lock down the user’s computers to the same degree you might lock down a child’s computer, which opens up the ability for viruses to do their work.
Experts from Sophos, an IT security firm, has noted that while the security features in Vista are effective at stopping some viruses, three of the top ten are still capable of bypassing these defenses and infecting user’s PCs. Specifically, W32/Stratio-Zip, W32/Netsky-P and W32/MyDoom-O, which comprise 39.7% of all malware currently circulating, can all infect a Windows Vista system. Carole Theriault, a senior security consultant at Sophos said:

There has been much speculation about whether Vista would render existing malware extinct, and the news is now in – it won’t. While Microsoft should be commended for the huge security improvements it has made in Vista, running separate security software is still essential to eliminate the risk of infection. On top of this, cyber criminals will already be looking at creating Vista-specific malware. Users need to think carefully about whether their current solution is going to offer sufficient protection against such emerging threats, given that some vendors continue to experience problems adapting their software for the Vista operating environment.