Many people are unaware of the many problems the industry has to face. Even the best antivirus software are susceptible to issues. Some are minor and may easily be fixed, whereas others are more serious.

One of the main problems is that virus signatures do not provide enough to shield against a wide range of threats. Whenever new viruses appear they take a while before the antivirus companies can make and release new antivirus updates. This is because they have to wait until their products detect the virus and then send the virus to be examined.

The virus is likely to spread and dozens or even hundreds of computers could be infected. It could also be spread to other networks. To be efficient, anti-virus software must to be able to detect and block such infections very quickly. This means that heuristic, or behavior analysis software is more effective than signature detection that is simple.

Another issue is that incompatibility between different antivirus programs is quite frequent. While the majority antivirus software developers place a lot of emphasis on developing quality products and pay a lot of attention this hyperlink to fixing bugs, the reality is that sometimes, multiple antivirus programs can cause conflicts.