White Papers for Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC)

Enhancing Desktop and Laptop Security Performance with Disk Fragmentation

Diskeeper Corporation

There are numerous well documented improvements to system performance and reliability when an automated disk defragmentation program is used. Applications load faster, the computer boots to a useable state in less time, backup requires less time to transfer data to an archival storage devices, and many more. This paper pursues a narrowed focus, specifically addressing the tangible benefit that disk defragmentation provides to desktop and laptop client security.

Anti-malware security software has become ubiquitous commodity. Whether used on servers, desktops or laptops, the scanning of files on demand or as a scheduled process, is a significant part of the overall business security equation. This particular research paper will present the results of testing performed on typical desktop/laptop environments. As a core function, malicious software detection-and-removal applications scan files (including the Windows Registry) for known malware or malware patterns. The general principle is that disk fragmentation will increase the time required to scan for and remove these malicious files. This paper presents data from detailed investigations into the performance improvement in anti-malware scan times when advanced disk defragmentation is applied.

The approach of this report is to display the improvement in antivirus and anti-spyware utility scan times (speed) before and after defragmentation using Diskeeper 2007. Additional measurements were taken during the defragmentation process (i.e. before defragmentation had completed) to note immediate returns on scan time improvement.

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