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Know the Truth: Signatures and Multi-AV Scanners

NEWS / 05.09.16 / Stuart McClure

"Every misunderstanding creates an opportunity for education."

– Unknown

Contrary to competitors, reporters and bloggers who’ve never seen, much less used, our products, we don’t use or rely on signatures or multi-AV scanners or traditional AV scanners. Period. Full stop. 

Why? Because at the end of the day, we just don’t trust anyone, especially the AV industry. We have collected samples sourced from countless places to train our machine learning models ourselves and by doing so have created an insanely high efficacy rate measured countless times well above 90% and often well over 99% by volume. This is in an antivirus industry that can barely break the 50% efficacy ceiling (even with their sharing of convictions among themselves called "reputation"). In other words, we don’t need to know or for that matter, care about anyone else’s convictions.

But as it goes with the cybersecurity sewing circle sometimes, competitors will spread FUD and commonly confuse the market with HOW we do what we do. They don’t fully understand what we are doing or how we are doing it so they grasp at straws to understand it. So try to look past their unfounded claims. When you hear FUD in our industry just ask yourself, would the person perpetuating it have any motivation to spread misinformation? If so, feel free to use your ear muffs. And of course, test yourself.

Over the past two years we have shown countless times how antiquated and archaic antivirus technology truly is. We show how obfuscated and mutated live samples can easily bypass both traditional and "next-gen" AV vendors in our "Unbelievable Tour" every week. We were the only ones to demonstrate our efficacy without relying on an internet connection, without requiring any cloud uploads, and certainly without ever needing the judgment of a 30-year-old industry to tell us right from wrong, good from bad.

As for Cylance? We’re going to continue speaking the truth to protect and empower our customers and those who desperately need the protection our products provide. So don’t trust anyone. Don’t trust the "independents". Don’t trust the bloggers or the reporters. Don’t trust the vendors. Don’t trust us! Please, please, please, just trust yourself. Test for yourself. Only then will you believe.

P.S. - Oh, and if you’re evaluating endpoint protection technologies right now, you might want to re-test their detections this week (including ours) in both connected and disconnected states. Only then will the truth will be known. Want to know more about CylancePROTECT® really works? Read our Math vs. Malware white paper here.

Stuart McClure

About Stuart McClure

CEO, President, and Founder of Cylance

Stuart leads Cylance® as its CEO for the first math based approach to threat detection, protection and response. Prior to Cylance, Stuart was EVP, Global CTO and General Manager at McAfee/Intel. Stuart is the creator and lead-author of the most successful security book of all time, Hacking Exposed. He is widely recognized for his extensive and in-depth knowledge of security, and is one of the industry's leading authorities in information security today.