Hello Everyone.

My name is…………….well, you don’t need to know my name…….

…….all you need to know is I’m addicted to legacy antivirus.

Every day I fight the urge to update a dat file and run a whole disk scan.

But thanks to the wonderful support of my friend Carl, from Cognition, and his rehabilitation programme, Cylance. I have now been clean nine months.

But I’m here to admit I almost fell off the wagon yesterday……..

My old supplier called me up. I was a regular at this time of year so I should have expected it really.

The stuff I used to use has been relabelled now. I think they’ve put an “X” on it or something similar, but from what I hear from other users, it’s still the same gear. Great at first but very quickly gets you into trouble.

To be honest, it was a pretty difficult conversation. I told him that I was doing much better now and hadn’t had a virus in nine months. But then he started offering me some other flavours. He doesn’t care what he sells, he carries loads of different types. They all sounded so good and so cheap! A yellow one, a red one and even a Russian variety. It was so hard for me to turn him down. Those memories of watching my CPU stuck at 100% and spending my days re-imaging encrypted laptops were so joyous.

But do you know what? I said No! I never want to go back there!

My life is better now. I spend my time doing proper security work and making a real difference to our business.

Kicking the habit was very hard at the time. Everyone on our industry uses this stuff, but I just had this nagging feeling that my life could be better.

And then I met Carl. I always saw his rants on social media about Cylance, but I thought he was just another peddler, pushing the same old filth that I was already on. So when I finally met him, he just said, “Don’t believe me, don’t believe anyone, just try Cylance and see for yourself.”

Well…….. having used legacy antivirus for many years I was accustomed to taking risks, so I thought why not.

Turns out it was no risk at all. It just works. No more embarrassing infections.

And nine months later, here I am! Clean of legacy antivirus.

(Applause….)

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Seriously though…

We have an industry stuck in doing what it’s always done and getting the results they’ve always got. Virtually every new client I speak to dislikes their incumbent antivirus product, but keeps buying it year after year. My simple advice is that there is a better way. Just try it. No hard sales push. No formal Proof of Concepts. If you just want to see Cylance in action, play with some malware and test it for yourself, then please get in touch. Alternatively, if you want a direct chat with me, message me on LinkedIn or on Twitter.

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Even more seriously though….

This article has been a fun analogy about antivirus, but there are countless people around us and amongst us that suffer with real addictions every day. And the impact on their friends and family is tremendous, especially at this time of year where cheer and family bonds are meant to be in abundance. We all know someone that is in pain from addiction and your support can make a world of difference.

Here are a few links for some help with addiction:

http://www.nhs.uk/livewell/addiction/Pages/addictionhome.aspx

https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help

https://www.lifeline.org.au/get-help/topics/substance-abuse-and-addiction