Saturday, October 29, 2011

AV-comparatives.org Whole Product Dynamic Test – September 2011

The top five products in the AV-Comparatives.org and the "Whole Product Dynamic Real World Test” for September has some major antivirus and internet security suite vendors performing not so well. The top five for September were BitDefender, F-Secure, Trend Micro, McAfee, and Symantec. Avira and K7 dropped out of the top 5. K7 dropped to fourth from the bottom, while Sophos, WebRoot, PC-Tools cannot be smiling, rounding out the bottom three. Avira was the top “free” vendor. This test may not greatly effect revenues, but there are bragging rights in these tests;).

September Results Whole Product Dynamic Test

1. 99.7 – BitDefender
2. 99.0 – F-Secure
3. 98.8 – Trend Micros
4. 98.7 – McAfee
5. 98.7 - Symantec

August Results Whole Product Dynamic Test


1. 99.5 – Trend Micro
2. 99.0 – Symantec
3. 98.4 – Avira
4. 98.4 – BitDefender
5. 97.9 – K7

To see complete results for September (twelve more vendors), go to http://www.av-comparatives.org/en/comparativesreviews/dynamic-tests and view the monthly report. More important though, are results over a period of time. For a one quarter write-up http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/dyn/wpdt2011_1_en.pdf

The 2012 versions of antivirus and internet security suites have been rolling out of the last couple of months. These will probably be incorporated into the test bed, replacing the 2011 versions. This test group continues to innovate in their testing. Go to their website to check out the anti-phishing test (to be covered another time).

Go to http://www.av-comparatives.org/en/comparativesreviews/dynamic-tests to play with the interactive table. You can also modify the time period and view results.

About AV-comparatives.org - www.av-comparatives.org

AV-Comparatives is an Austrian Non-Profit-Organization, which is providing independent Anti-Virus software tests free to the public.

Friday, October 21, 2011

AV-Comparatives Anti-Phishing Test – August 2011

AV-Comparatives released their Anti-Phishing Test in August. This is a new test. Most of the products tested were Internet Security Suite 2011 solutions. Hopefully, this test will be duplicated now that many of the leading Internet Security Suite 2012 solutions have been released. http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/phishing/antiphishing2011.pdf . 19 internet security products were in the test.

Anti-Phishing Test 2011

Top 10 products in order, were, in terms of percentage:

1. 98.6 – Webroot
2. 97.3 – eScan
3. 96.7 – McAfee
4. 96.1 – Bullguard
5. 94.4 – BitDefender
6. 92.8 – Trend Micro
7. 92.1 – F-Secure
8. 89.4 – Symantec
9. 89.1 – Avira
10. 88.7 – K7

Look for this to be cross-tabbed against some other test results shortly. A major whoops to TrustPort who finished 18th at 76.9%. Also, TrustPort and Bullguard have consistently been top performers in Virus Bulletin RAP Average Quadrant http://kensek.blogspot.com/2011/08/august-2011-virus-bulletin-rap-averages.html . McAfee and K7, not so much.

AV-Comparatives is an Austrian Non-Profit-Organization, which provides independent Anti-Virus software tests free to the public.
www.av-comparatives.org

Go to their website for complete details about the organization, the many tests they perform, and to download copies of tests. This includes a September 2011 Corporate Comparative report that runs over 100 pages!

Friday, October 07, 2011

Oracle Settlement of False Claim Lawsuit Could Top $200 Million

“In what will shape up to be the largest False Claims Act settlement ever collected by the General Services Administration, software maker Oracle Corp. and Oracle America will pay $199.5 million plus interest to the agency, according to a Justice Department Oct. 6 news release”. This is from an October 7 news story. http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1298/120798t1.htm

You can bundle the software with hardware. You can bundle the software with consulting fees. You can bundle it with support fees. But in the end, when it comes to GSA pricing, the federal government gets favored nation’s status. Well, the myth of the $600 government hammer notwithstanding. That came down to cost allocation and is another story. http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1298/120798t1.htm

In software pricing and licensing agreements, there’s list price. There’s street price. There’s a negotiated price. And then there’s the GSA Price List. It appears as if the courts decided that Oracle had licensed software to someone else for lower than GSA pricing.

From a competitive standpoint, if you want to know the lowest a competitor can go, check out the GSA price list. The government alleged that some customers had received higher discounts than they had received. That wasn’t a good thing.

The payday for a former Oracle employee because of the Federal False Claims act will be $40 as his portion of the settlement. That’s even larger than what Hewlett Packard paid Hurd to go away.

In an interesting comment, a company spokeswoman told the Federal Times in an email that "strong controls" would have insured government customers received fair prices. Colloquially, this could almost be translated to “someone in government should have paid more attention.”

To be fair to businesses, sometimes the press can be unclear on the concept of software licensing and pricing. It’s common for software companies to have a tiered licensing structure. With tiered licensing, prices decrease at greater tier levels. Assume that a company wants to purchase some internet security software. Let’s say that between 150 and 199 units, the price is $25 each. At 200 units, the unit price decreases to $20. Doing the math, it turns out that for anything greater than 160 units, they should purchase 200 licenses. Why? Because they’ll essentially get 40 licenses for free.

Years ago, the press vilified a company in CA for selling the state government more licenses for than they needed. But, it could have actually made economic sense for them to do that.

The above is probably “too much information”. But, it’s a useful example.

If you want to learn more about GSA pricing, go to https://www.gsaadvantage.gov/advantage/main/start_page.do

So, Oracle pays the fine for not providing the Federal Government favored nation’s status. The whistle blower receives $40 million. Now he can buy an island and have his own nation.

Tuesday, October 04, 2011

AV-Test Product Review and Certification Report – Q3-2011

During July and August 2011, AV-Test (www.AV-Test.org) tested 25 internet security products in the areas protection, repair and usability. The highest score possible in each category was 6.0. The test was on Windows 7. Six company’s products failed the test by failing to achieve a score of 11 or greater. The companies with the top four scores and the avg score of the three categories are below:

5.5 - BitDefender: Internet Security Suite 2011
5.2 - F-Secure: Internet Security 2011
5.2 - Panda: Internet Security 2011
4.8 - Kaspersky: Internet Security 2011
4.8 - AVG: Internet Security 2011
4.8 - Security Coverage SecurityIT Plus

McAfee, PC Tools, and Webroot were among the companies whose products failed to receive certification.

The table below combines several things. The ranked score for AV-Test.org ‘s August/September test, the ranked score for the Q2 test running on Windows XP, and the Q3 Av-compratives.org overall data detection rankings from their for On Demand Detection for Malicious Software. The caveat for this column is that the test used vendors’ antivirus 2011 products. AV-test.org used internet security suite 2011 products for the most part. There are blanks where products were not tested for particular tests.


















What Does it All Mean?

In addition to reading comprehensive product reviews, you should look at the details for the above tests. Also, read the product reviews for the products you’re interested in. Don’t rely on Facebook Fans’ thumbs up. A different digit may be raised, should their laptops catch something.

http://www.av-test.org/en/tests/test-reports/julaug-2011/

www.av-comparatives.org