CNET’s News.com ran an article that once again highlighted the benefits of whitelisting. Whitelisting is a technology that has been around for a while now, though it somehow never really caught on with the mainstream.

In fact, I wrote about whitelisting last year on TechRepublic:

Whitelisting takes a different approach to the malware problem. It involves the recording of all valid programs and prevents those not recognized from executing. As such, it can be used effectively not only against viruses and worms — but also against spyware and unauthorized applications.

Think of it this way - in the real world, security guards screen people and admit only those who are authorized to enter. Ironically, this is not how the current generation of anti-virus software work. Instead, they generally lean towards actively filtering out known bad hats (viruses and malwares).

It seemed that Symantec CEO John Thompson acknowledged that technologies like whitelisting “would be critical in the future”. Now, this definitely caught my attention.

I think I’ll start to examine the various whitelisting product offerings more closely in the weeks to come.

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