Traditional antivirus will be dead in two years

For the vast majority of users, at least, the current model of paying for and installing separate online security software products for each device, OS and transaction environment is on the way out. It has to die. Why? Look at the way the kids use Google, and then look to the future.

Increasingly, users expect to be able to communicate and transact across a variety of devices. And younger users - the very people who use laptops, smartphones and public internet terminals - have less concept of the various operating systems and operating environments they use. Put bluntly: they don't care, they just want to get online, all the time.

Give it a year or two, then, and today's students and stoners will be spending hard cash online via a variety of devices as a matter of course. Particularly if companies like MySpace finally get music downloads right, and the kids start paying for their kicks. Cash attracts criminals, but the current model of shelling out 50 quid to protect a Windows PC against malware signatures isn't going to cut it. Not my sentiments, those of Symantec bigwig Con Mallon.