If you want to keep your business data and systems secure it is essential that you have an antivirus or antimalware scanner installed on every system. While the install rates of these programs in businesses is nearly 100%, there is an increasing trend where some companies are letting their subscriptions expire. What happens when an antivirus subscription expires? While each program will treat an expired subscription slightly different, generally speaking, most will still function in some way. You will normally be able to run a scan, but you likely won’t be able to deal with any malware or security threats. Features like automated scanning will also be turned off. Other programs will stop updating the essential virus and malware databases that are used by the program to identify and clean new malware. This means that while you will be secure from known viruses and security flaws up to the date of the last database update, you will not be secure against newly discovered viruses. In short, when your subscription expires, your systems will no longer be secure, or as protected as they should be.
