It is a huge liability to rely on virus definitions and heuristics engines. They are often too little, too late. The trend toward rapid development and advanced threats started about 15 years ago, and it has been making antimalware applications increasingly irrelevant.
Ad- and script-blocking helps, but those are targeted primarily at web browsing, and that is certainly not the only attack vector.
Whitelisting and mandatory access controls (e.g., SELinux) are the only truly effective measures, and they require a lot more work than antivirus. Antivirus is a simple 5-minute installation with automatic updates thereafter---and some even refuse to do that much. There is little hope that most home users will implement anything better.
There are adequate solutions, but they raise the bar in terms of the expertise, expense, and effort required. Even if a company addressed the "expense" issue by releasing a consumer-priced whitelisting application for Windows, there is no clear way to eliminate the other requirements.
In light of all this, I see things getting worse before they get better. It takes a lot of problems before home users pony up their time and money.
Ad- and script-blocking helps, but those are targeted primarily at web browsing, and that is certainly not the only attack vector.
Whitelisting and mandatory access controls (e.g., SELinux) are the only truly effective measures, and they require a lot more work than antivirus. Antivirus is a simple 5-minute installation with automatic updates thereafter---and some even refuse to do that much. There is little hope that most home users will implement anything better.
There are adequate solutions, but they raise the bar in terms of the expertise, expense, and effort required. Even if a company addressed the "expense" issue by releasing a consumer-priced whitelisting application for Windows, there is no clear way to eliminate the other requirements.
In light of all this, I see things getting worse before they get better. It takes a lot of problems before home users pony up their time and money.