Whole Product Dynamic Real World Protection Test – May 2012

AV-Comparatives.org has released their latest Whole Product Dynamic Real World Protection Test – May 2012.  An informative document that will be updated multiple times over the course of the year.  What’s even more interesting than the results alphabetically by vendor is going online and sorting by performance.  Isn’t that what it’s all about?  The numbers below are "percent captured".

May Real World Protection Results from AV-Comparatives.org

Four  of the companies that were in the top five in April remained in May.  BullGuard dropped out of the to five.  BitDefender was in a 6-way tie with ESET, F-Secure,   G Data, Kaspersky, and Qihoo for the lead position.  Yes, all the companies listed below had the same capture rate.

99.1 - BitDefender

99.1 - ESET

99.1 - F-Secure

99.1 - G Data

99.1 – Kaspersky

99.1 - Qihoo

The top rated free product was Avira.  They placed twelfth.  Ahnlab and Webroot were in   twenty-first and twentieth    positions, respectively, with 93.3 and 93.8.  Webroot moved up one.  All products captured over 90% in May testing.  This wasn’t the case in April.

April Real World Protection Results from AV-Comparatives.org

99.8 – BitDefender

99.4 – G Data

99.2 – Kaspersky

99.2 – BullGuard

98.4 – Qihoo

As always, this is just one test.  Individuals or companies evaluating the ability of products to detect and capture malware should visit www.av-comparatives.org , www.virusbtn.com and www.av-test.org to view the results of other tests.  The nice thing about these organizations is that they tend to use relatively large samples in testing, which improves the legitimacy of the results.    There is more to product quality than a number of "likes" on a Facebook fan page.

To learn more about testing in general, there are a number of informative (and free) white papers on the Ant-Malware Testing Standards Organization (AMTSO) web site www.amtso.org .

About AV-comparatives     www.av-comparatives.org

AV-Comparatives is an Austrian Non-Profit-Organization, which is providing independent Anti-Virus software tests free to the public.  Go to their website to view all the great comparative reports and surveys they publish.