Friday, March 16, 2012

Tolly Publishes Ease of Management and Usability Evaluation Test – Internet Security Suites for SMB Users

Tolly has published a February 2012 study on “Ease of Management and Usability Evaluation against Competing Security Suites for SMB Users”. This commissioned test included 10 company’s’ SMB Internet Security Suite Products. In alphabetical order, the companies in the report are AVG Technologies, Avast, Avira, ESET, Kaspersky, McAfee, Sophos, Symantec, and Trend Micro.


In sponsored tests, the sponsor selects tasks and the vendors. While cherry picking can take place, for tasks where the results are quantitative, the results “are what they are”. From a devil’s advocate perspective, what should thought about from the customer perspective includes “how often will I be performing that task”, what difference does a few seconds make”, “what difference does a couple of steps make”, particularly if these tasks are only done during initial setup or infrequently. Below are the tallies for who had the most firsts and who had the most seconds. In the report, first includes “By Default” and “Home Screen”.


Firsts on the Usability Evaluation Test


5 – Sophos

4 – AVG Technologies

2 – Avast, Avira, Kaspersky, Trend Micro


Seconds in the Usability Evaluation Test


4 – AVG Technologies

3 – ESET, Kaspersky

2 - Avira


The report itself has a grid illustrating the complete results.


A test like this doesn’t measure the ability of the products to stop malware. For that, you should go to the various test organizations such as www.av-test.org, www.av-comparatives.org, www.virusbtn.com , www.icsalabs.com and view results for products that have been tested.


The report “Ease of Management and Usability Evaluation against Competing Security Suites for SMB Users” is at


http://tolly.com/DocDetail.aspx?DocNumber=212102


Tally also has an interesting and informative library of tests they’ve performed for various companies. It’s well worth visiting their site. A report just released is “Bit9 Parity Suite 6.0 Comparison of Bit9 Advanced Threat Solution versus McAfee Endpoint Protection Suite and Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.”


About the Tolly Group


The company was founded by Kevin Tolly in 1989 to provide hands-on evaluation and certification of Information Technology products and services.


The Tolly Group enjoys a unique position in the information technology sector. As the premier independent test lab and provider of third-party validation services, Tolly has worked with virtually every major vendor and evaluated the most important products and technologies to appear over the past decade. In addition, in many cases, The Tolly Group has tested these solutions not once but many times, tracking products as they evolve and markets as they mature.

www.tolly.com


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