Application whitelisting is a viable option when you can leverage software signing
Thirty years ago IBM launched the XT5160 -- the first hard drive DOS-based PC. But the computer virus, nowadays so seemingly tied to the PC, actually appeared almost a decade earlier. It took until 1986 for these two threads to come together and the first PC virus, Brain, was born. By 2000, networks we spreading and so were worms like ILOVEYOU which was considered one of the most damaging.