12 POPULAR ANTI-VIRUS and Internet Security PC Anti-Virus Protection 2010/2011
This test aims to compare the effectiveness of the most recent releases of popular anti-virus software1. The
products include those from Kaspersky, McAfee, Microsoft, Norton (Symantec) and Trend Micro, as well as Download free Anti Virus versions from Avast, AVG and Avira. Other products include those from BitDefender, ESET, G-Data and K7. The tests were conducted between 07/07/2010 and 22/07/2010 using the most up to date versions of the software available.
A total of 12 products were exposed to genuine internet threats that real customers could have encountered
during the test period. Crucially, this exposure was carried out in a realistic way, reflecting a customer’s
experience as closely as possible. For example, each test system visited real, infected websites that significant
numbers of internet users were encountering at the time of the test. These results reflect what would have
happened if those users were using one of the seven products tested.
Each product has been scored for its accuracy in detecting and handling malware. We awarded two points for defending against a threat, one for neutralizing it and deducted two points every time a product allowed the
system to be compromised. The reason behind this score weighting is to give credit to products that deny malware an opportunity to tamper with the system and to penalize those that allow malware to damage it. In some of our test cases a compromised system was made unstable, or even unusable without expert knowledge.
Even if active malware was removed, we considered such damaged systems to count as being compromised. The Norton product defended against all threats so it scores a full 80 marks. It was the only product to avoid being compromised by the internet threats. Kaspersky's product came a close second, losing points due to neutralizing two threats and being compromised by one.
The following illustrates the general level of protection provided by each of the security products,
combining the defended and neutralized incidents into an overall figure. This figure is not weighted with an
arbitrary scoring system as it was in 1. Overall accuracy.
The average protection levels afforded by the tested products, when exposed to the threats used in this test,
was 87.5 per cent. Above average products included those from Symantec (Norton), Kaspersky, ESET,
Avast! And G Data. Only one of these was free (Avast).
The security products provided different levels of protection. When a product defended against a threat, it
prevented the malware from gaining a foothold on the target system. A threat might have been able to infect
the system and, in some cases, the product neutralized it later. When it couldn’t, the system was compromised.
The graph below shows that the most successful products tended to defend, rather than neutralize, the
threats. Between them the top five products only neutralized 11 threats, while they defended a total of 178.
They were compromised 11 times. The five least effective products, on the other hand, neutralized 21 threats
and defended just 123. They were compromised a total of 56 times.
A security product needs to be able to protect the system from threats, while allowing legitimate software to
work properly. When legitimate software is misclassified a false positive is generated. We split the results
into two main groups because the products all took one of two approaches when attempting to protect the
system from the legitimate programs. They either warned that the software was suspicious or took the more
decisive step of blocking it.
Blocking a legitimate application is more serious than issuing a warning because it directly hampers the user.
In this test we only recorded one blocking action, which was by the K7 product as it falsely categorized the
mIRC online chat application as being a "High Security Risk".
Warnings may be of variable strength, sometimes simply asking if the legitimate application should be allowed to access the internet. This type of warning accounted for the majority seen in this test. The graph below includes the number and type of false positive that each product generated.
 |
| 12 Program Anti virus Protection Scores |
12 Top Scores Program Download Anti Virus And Download Free Anti Virus 2010/2011 Protection
0 comments:
Post a Comment