IS ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE a waste of money?

When it comes to computer security, he’s paranoid — and for good reason. He’s seen what the bad guys can do. But when he met with Wired at the RSA Conference in San Francisco this week, he said something surprising: He doesn’t use antivirus software.

As it turns out, many of his security-minded peers don’t use it either. The reason: If someone is going to try and attack them, they’re likely to use a new technique, one that most antivirus products will miss. “If you asked the average security expert whether they use antivirus or not,” Grossman says “a significant proportion of them do not.”

Dan Guido, the CEO of security startup Trail of Bits also doesn’t use AV. Some security pros use it because they’re in regulated industries, or because they work with customers who require it. “If it weren’t for that,” he says, “almost nobody in the security industry would run it.”

It’s a story we heard again and again at RSA this week. The pros are generally smart enough to avoid the things that will get them hacked — visiting malicious websites or opening documents from untrusted sources. But even if they get fooled, the odds are their antivirus software catching it are pretty low. But many of these pros also believe that antivirus isn’t always that useful to the average business either.

Hmm.