Dive Brief:

• VirusTotal, an information-sharing service, announced late last week that it will no longer provide some companies access to their collection of industry analysis of computer viruses, according to Reuters.

• The service is the largest known collection of industry analysis of computer viruses.

• Google, which runs the service, said it will no longer allow access to companies that choose not to share their own evaluations of submitted samples.

Dive Insight:

Google runs the VirusTotal database to “allow security professionals to share new examples of suspected malicious software and opinions on the danger they pose,” Reuters reports.  

VirusTotal receives approximately 400,000 submissions of potentially harmful files each day, but most of them are from older tech companies. Some newer companies use the database, but choose not to contribute to it. That has irked the older companies, which have pushed for the revised rules as a result.

Analysts say the changes may make some companies less able to protect their customers from threats. Businesses may want to check to see if the security company they rely on is affected by the change, as it could potentially make them less effective against threats, at least in the short term.