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Most of the time IT is just implementing policy from the CIO, which is basing it on the requirements of the company's insurers. Insurance companies require some very annoying things like Anti-virus. It's like having a lock on your office. You do it so the insurance company will pay you if someone comes in and steals your stuff.

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It's more like the requirements cronies put into defense contracts to make sure the contractors make a lot of money.

The reason "security requirements" documents require antivirus is that companies like Symantec make sure they're in the right position to be the ones asked when someone is writing up a security requirements document, so that their answer can be "make sure you install antivirus (and here's the contact info for our volume licensing center)."

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