We look back on the years 2000-2010 from the perspective of the anti-virus industry. Four technology trends were responsible for substantial changes in the computing environment, which formed a backdrop for the virus problem. (1) Pervasive computing devices are now the dominant way that people interact with the digital world, far outnumbering traditional PCs, and the shift in architecture was responsible for both new problems and new protections. (2) The decline of Moore's Law resulted in dramatically falling chip prices, resulting both in their commoditization and much more widespread use throughout the world. (3) Broadband access to the Internet from most of the developed world put much of the Earth's population online all the time. (4) The rise of ecommerce has affected every sector of the economy; the digital economy now rivals its material counterpart. We review the most significant viral disasters in the past ten years, showing how they could have been predicted from these technology trends, and usually avoided. To the contrary, we show how the anti-virus industry actually responded, often after the fact. While anti-virus technology has evolved significantly since the year 2000, with several technological marvels to its credit, perhaps the most surprising change is that
few end users are even aware that it exists any more.
