Security Predictions for 2016 or “Let the internet security prognostication begin”

It’s that time of the year, when security pundits make their security predictions and comment on trends for 2016. Of course, it would be great if the pundits who came out with predictions for 2015 came out with a report card in early 2016. 

Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window - Peter Drucker

Consolidation in the Security Sector

Look for continued security consolidation as some of the larger vendors utilize the strategy that it is quicker and easier to buy a technology to broaden their security portfolio than to develop the technology internally. At the same time, some larger companies will sell off their (incomplete) portfolio of security products to focus on other sectors. There are rumors, for example, about SonicWall being put on the market by Dell.  Of course, FireEye rumors are making the rounds after their Q3 results.

Look for other vendors to analyze the market, do a make/buy analysis and then license missing technology from smaller, more agile, companies.  

“If you think technology can solve your security problems, then you don’t understand the problems and you don’t understand the technology.” – Bruce Schneier

Bubble Will Burst on Some Newly Public Security Vendors

At some point in time, companies have to generate cash and after working through the wonders and options of tax accounting, companies have to show a bottom line profit.  Look for investors getting tired of “but we’re going after market share” and selling their stock. For others, shorting activity will increase.  An offshoot of this is that these companies will become less expensive to acquire. Happiness is positive cash flow.

Splitting (breaking?) of Humpty Dumpty. Symantec and Hewlett Packard

Symantec has retired their vision (several years old) of becoming a widely diversified company (begun by John Thompson) and is splitting/divesting into security focused Symantec, and back up and recovery, SDN, and governance focused Veritas. Hewlett Packard has split into two companies. HP Inc.   holds the printing and personal systems side of the business, selling printers, scanners, displays, personal computers (laptop, desktop, and tablets),  and the supplies and services associated with them.  Hewlett-Packard Enterprise will handle the hybrid cloud, servers, storage, converged systems, networking, management software, and the services necessary to run an enterprise.    They are both Fortune 100 companies, the latter led by Meg Whitman, and the former by Dion Weisler.  Not bad for a company that began in a garage in Palo Alto, selling to Disney.

One of these splits will work out much better than the other one.   That one being….Symantec. HP Enterprises, and HP, Inc. are still battleships.   

Life is a Breach

There will be at least one major security breach, for a number of reasons.  Some companies have still not gotten the memo about cybercriminals, thinking, “It can’t happen to us” and are being slow in their investments.  There are a number of bright cybercriminals out there. They design their own methods of attack.  They may rent use of a botnet as part of their attack strategy.  If the CIO/CEO want to maintain their title, look for full transparency, accepting the blame, laying out the groundwork to prevent this from happening again (hopefully), and protecting their customers. Classic disaster recovery procedure, often not followed.

Cybercriminals Will Broaden Their Target Base

Cybercriminals will increase the number of vertical markets they go after and the size of the typical breach will be smaller. The number of breaches (reported anyway) will decrease. From a CSO Online article - Jody Westby, CEO of Global Cyber Risk, “it is the data that makes a business attractive, not the size – especially if it is delicious data, such as lots of customer contact info, credit card data, health data, or valuable intellectual property.”  http://bit.ly/1BcYw8W

The Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) reported in October that there has been 606 data breaches recorded through October 13, 2015, and that more than 175 million records have been exposed.    The top 4 sectors with respects to incidents, business (39%), health care (36%), banking (10%), and government (8%) 68% of the records exposed were in the health care sector. There were over 780 data breaches in 2013.

We Will Continue to be Our Own Worst Enemy

“Companies spend millions of dollars on firewalls, encryption and secure access devices, and it’s money wasted, because none of these measures address the weakest link in the security chain.”- Kevin Mitnick

 A warning from your browser not to visit that site?  A found thumb drive?  New pictures of (fill in the name of your favorite celebrity) on the web or as an attachment to your email.  These are the internet equivalent of wet paint signs. Some people just have to check for themselves. More security aware companies will do more than have people look at a slide presentation on security and take a quiz once a year. They’ll send their own employees phishing emails, among other tactics.

The Wisdom of Crowds

James Surowiecki, in the book “The Wisdom of Crowds”, speculated that large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant–better at solving problems, fostering innovation, and coming to wise decisions. In 2016, market share of consumer AV/Malware purchases will probably still continue to be more a reflection of how many “likes” a product receives, rather than how they are reviewed by a PC Publication,  or test organizations AV-Comparatives, or AV-Test. Scary. Whom are you going to trust? Your doctor or your Facebook friends?

A  Growing use of Something Other Than Passwords

The top 20 list of passwords for 2016 may not vary greatly from 2015, look for more people to use some sort of biometrics or Multi-factor Authentication (MFA), to enhance the security of their devices. This will occur in businesses more quickly than in the consumer marketplace. According to an article in CNET at the beginning of the year, the top 10 passwords of 2014 were 123456, password, 12345, 12345678, QWERTY, 1234567890, 1234, baseball, dragon, and football. If your password looks anything like this, or is your pet’s name, change it immediately. There are a number of articles on creative ways of making up passwords or using different figures you can draw on your keyboard. At minimum, consider reading a few articles and select a method that works for you.

“Showtime” - The Government or a Large Security Vendor will take the Offensive

At some point in time, negotiations just aren’t cutting it.  Look for a concerted attack against some cybercriminals, whether they’re independent, being treated with benign neglect in their native country, or being subsidized.  This is despite any negotiations taking place with some countries on an international level. Sometimes the best defense is a good offense.  “The Darknet: Is the Government Destroying 'the Wild West of the Internet?” is a November Newsweek article that’s an interesting read. http://bit.ly/1MR5kAX

Government Takes the Lead in Sharing of Information between Security Vendors

The bragging right for many security companies is how quickly they identify and react to threats, and update their existing customers almost immediately.  They are not going to want to share this information with competitors as quickly.  Look for the government to be the driver in information sharing. One question that arises – how open will this table be for all security vendors or will it be a selective group?   “Senate passes cybersecurity information sharing bill despite privacy fears.” Washington Post, October 27. http://wapo.st/1KFbFIc   

The News of the Death of Endpoint Security Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

To paraphrase a quotation by American humorist Mark Twain.  The reliance of AV/malware products on signature files to detect threats has been declining for years. The endpoint   is the last line of defense. Technologies relying on heuristics are not the whole solution. Look for endpoints to use such techniques as artificial intelligence and machine learning, whether powered at the endpoint or in the cloud to lead the way. Despite statements by Symantec and others, do not look for AV/malware protection provided at the endpoint either installed their or involving technology in the cloud to disappear anytime soon.

Who will be Among the Top New Innovative Security Companies in 2016?

Good question.

On November 3, SINET announced their top 16 innovators (revenues under $15 million) for 2015. These companies were:  Bayshore Networks, Inc., BehavioSec, Gurucul Solutions, Lastline, Netskope, Onapsis, Inc., Palerra, Inc., PFP Cybersecurity, Pindrop Security,  QuintessenceLabs, RedOwl Analytics, Secure Islands,  SecurityScorecard, Sqrrl Data, Inc., TaaSera, Inc., Vectra Networks, Inc., You may be hearing from these companies over the course of 2016. Gartner and others will be coming out with their lists.

A mantra for 2016, “Friends don’t let their friends be mindless about security.”

AV-Comparatives Releases Results of May Real World Protection Test. Testing Firm Now ISO 9001 Certified

Austria based AV-Comparatives has released the results of their May “Real World Protection Test”.  Bitdefender, the best anti-malware company you may have never heard of topped all companies, with a 100% score and zero false positives.  Only Panda also blocked 100%.  This was with their free product!  Avira had the top score among the largest freemium vendors (with their internet security suite), blocking 99.5%.

At the other end of the spectrum, Korea based AhnLab ranked at the bottom of products tested, blocking only 87.5% of the threats (ouch), the only company tested at less than 90%.  McAfee had the most false positives, with 16.  The trend of market share leaders not being market performance leaders continued, as both McAfee, and Trend Micro finished in the bottom 1/3 of companies tested.  Symantec has opted out of being tested by AV-Comparatives (a disservice to customers, IMHO).  Man-up, SYMC.

The products included in the test were a mix of anti-virus, internet security suites, paid, and free products.  The exact versions used are listed in the report and on the website.

The Real World Protection Test is just one of a number of tests AV-Comparatives performs over the course of the year.  They can be downloaded from the company web-site http://www.av-comparatives.org/

AV-Comparatives’ Real-World Protection Test framework has been recognized by the “Standortagentur Tirol” with the 2012 “Cluster Award for innovation in computer science” and by the “Austrian Government” with the 2013 “Constantinus Award.

AV-Comparatives Receives ISO 9001 Certification

AV-Comparatives is now an ISO 9001 certified organization.  AV-Comparatives received the certificate from TÜV Austria for their management system for the scope: “Independent Tests of Anti-Virus Software” in early June.

"ISO 9001:2008 specifies requirements for a quality management system where an organization needs to demonstrate its ability to consistently provide product that meets customer and applicable statutory and regulatory requirements.  The organization has to  enhance customer satisfaction through the effective application of the system, including processes for continual improvement of the system and the assurance of conformity to customer and applicable statutory and regulatory requirements."  ISO 9001 is currently under revision with the final release of the new standards due by the end of 2015.

About AV-Comparatives

AV-Comparatives is an independent not-for-profit organization offering systematic testing that checks whether security software, such as PC/Mac-based antivirus products and mobile security solutions, lives up to its promises.  Using one of the largest sample collections worldwide, it creates a real-world environment for truly accurate testing.  AV-Comparatives offers freely accessible results to individuals, news organizations, and scientific institutions.  Certification by AV-Comparatives provides an official seal of approval for software performance.  

Seminal Moment for Hewlett Packard and Meg Whitman – 27,000 Layoffs Announced

Let the restructuring begin.  ­ For the fiscal second quarter, ending  in April, Hewlett Packard’s profit before some costs fell to 98 cents a share, below  analysts’ 91-cent average estimate.  However, the sales decline of three percent to $30.7 billion topped   the average projection of $29.9 billion.

As part of the earnings announcement on Wednesday, HP stated that it plans a   27,000 workforce reduction (an 8% reduction) between now and October 2014.  This is the largest payroll purge in its 73-year history.  Annual savings from layoffs, retirements, and other measures, will be about $3.5 billion annually.  The job cuts and retirements will pare Hewlett-Packard’s workforce to  349,600.  Among Whitman’s foci for the coming turnaround, delivering the “right products, at the right price, at the right time.”

Many of the cuts will come from the   enterprise services group, which manages data centers and provides technology consulting. This group expanded when Hewlett Packard acquired Electronic Data Systems for $13.2 billion in 2008.  Services demand has slowed, and the division’s profitability has declined amid competition from companies such as International Business Machines Corp.

  "These are never fun but given where H-P is, these are necessarily to get the company back on track," Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu said.  During the reign of Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, during one economic lull,   employees worked a 4-day workweek with a reduction in pay to maintain staff.  In today’s environment, even they may have had to go for layoffs. 

 “This is quite different from the cost-cutting that Mark Hurd undertook,” Whitman said in an interview.  “This is about fundamental business-process re-engineering.”

Meg Whitman   has said the company needs to make its products and services more competitive and spend more on research and product development.  Under some of her predecessors, Hurd, for example, R&D   suffered as cost cutting was the primary focus.  Brian Marshall, an analyst at ISI Group, said in a research note last month the company ought to spend $4 billion to $5 billion on R&D to compete with IBM and Cisco Systems Inc. in developing new products.  Hewlett Packard had been spending about $3.2 billion annually. 

When Whitman was named CEO in September, HP’s stock was at about $22.80.  It closed on Wednesday at $23.03 and had reached a peak of $29.89 on February 16.  During Whitman’s tenure, NASDAQ has gone up by about 15%.  Not a lot can be read into this, however.

A Brief Timeline of Whitman’s Tenure to Date

• Aug. 18: HP announces it will discontinue its tablet computer and smartphone products and may sell or spin off its PC division.
• Sept. 23: HP fires Apotheker after just 11 months and replaces him with Meg Whitman
• Oct. 27: HP says it will keep the PC division after all. 
• Dec. 9: HP says that instead of selling its WebOS mobile system or killing it off, it will make it available as open-source software that anyone can use and modify freely.  HP says it still plans to develop and support WebOS
• Feb. 22, 2012: Whitman urges investors to be patient and talks of a "multiyear journey" for a turnaround. 
• March 21: HP says it will combine its PC and printers businesses.  The move will save an unspecified amount of money.   
• April 11: Estimates from research groups Gartner and IDC suggest that HP has regained much of the PC business it had lost during the period of indecision.  Now about those tablets they sold for $99 when they said that they were thinking of discontinuing that business….

There will be uncertainty over the next few months as Whitman and had team decide in more detail where the cuts will be during this restructuring.  About a third of them will be in the United States.  The analysts will probably in general  be positive with the move.  Layoffs and reinvesting in R&D is nothing new.  These are typical turnaround Bain type activities, where both Whitman (and Romney), spent part of their careers.   

Nothing   has been said how acquisitions may play a role in the turnaround. While R&D will increase, growth via acquisition can make sense for certain deals to get into a business or plug a gap in a product line quickly. Part of Apotheker’s demise was his decision to (way) overpay for the Autonomy acquisition.  Hewlett Packard had been investing more heavily in security and making security acquisitions.  This will continue.

When Whitman accepted the CEO position,   she moved out of the “executive offices” and into a cubicle on the floor with other employees.  This is more in keeping with the culture that Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard had for the company. You didn’t see this during the Carly Fiorina era.

Meg Whitman isn’t getting a huge salary for her efforts.    In a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission HP wrote that  Whitman received a salary of $1, about $16.1 million in stock options, and $372,598 in "other compensation," including use of the company aircraft.

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-23/hp-third-quarter-forecast-misses-estimate-27-000-jobs-to-be-cut.html

 

http://kensek.blogspot.com/2012/03/meg-whitman-era-at-hewlett-packard-six.html

 

The Meg Whitman Era at Hewlett Packard - Six Months In

March 20 Addendum - Hewlett Packard Meg Whitman plans to combine the computing giant's PC and printing divisions in a major internal overhaul intended to spur combined sales of hardware to customers

The most recent move is intended to reap the synergies of two divisions whose hardware products are often sold side-by-side, said the second source familiar with the plan. (From Reuters)

Sounds like reductions in force ..... No economies of scale in manufacturing. No economies of scale in R&D. Do people need to upgrade their printer when they get the latest and greatest PC or laptop?

Still a B-

Original Post

Meg Whitman has now been CEO of Hewlett-Packard for six months. The scorecard? Probably a B-. It’s virtually impossible to make radical changes in 180 days unless your strategy is slash and burn. And that’s not what HP requires. HP is a $48 billion market cap firm with over 300k employees globally. This will take awhile. Whitman is saying two years.

Threats facing HP Whitman has pointed out include - PC sales are slowing as more people buy smartphones and tablets. The high-profit ink business is slipping as customers store photos on Facebook (or other sites) instead of printing them at home. HP is selling fewer high-end servers after archrival Oracle (ORCL) stopped making software for those systems.

Some immediate decisions needed to be made, quickly, when Whitman accepted the CEO position. She already was on the board. From a perception perspective, Whitman moved top executives out of their offices and into cubicles instead. This rings of the “old HP”, which is a good thing. This wasn’t seen during the Carly Fiorina era!

HP is keeping its $40 billion PC division. However, growth is projected to be in tablets. In this area, Apple has the lead over all other competitors. Tablet sales, driven by sales of Apple’s iPad, grew 274.2% to 63.2 million units last year — most of them iPads, according to tech tracker Canalys. Sales of desktop computers grew 2.3% to 112.4 million units; notebook sales grew 7.5% to 209.6 million units; and netbook sales fell 25.3% to 29.4 million units.

“PCs remain key tools for everything from video editing, music mixing, and spreadsheet crunching to thoughtful missives,” according to James Mouto, general manager for of HP’s personal computer business unit. “And if you’re sending Junior off to college, the first computing product needed for homework is a PC.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/briancaulfield/2012/03/07/hp-responds-to-apple-your-college-kid-still-needs-a-pc/

WebOS is going open source in September, when Open WebOS 1.0 is scheduled to be released. 500 WebOS employees were let go last September. 275 of the remaining 600 employees were released in late February.

For the stock quants - the stock price is up a little over 7.4% at $24.49 (March 16) since Whitman took the CEO helm. This is far below the 52 week high of $43.28 in March 2011. Competitor Dell is up 24% and the Dow is up 23% over the same period.

HP also has heavily invested in security. This includes acquiring security management company ArcSight for $1.2 billion in 2010. This is also an area Dell has chosen to invest in. Last week they announced that they were purchasing SonicWALL®, Inc. a provider of intelligent network security and data protection solutions. They are acquiring SonicWall from private equity investor firm Thoma Bravo for an estimated price of $1.2 billion.

http://kensek.blogspot.com/2012/03/dell-to-acquire-sonicwall.html

It should be an interesting next 6 months for Whitman as she works with the rest of management to turn HP around. Her salary? $1. Yes, there are incentives and stock options.

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_20201896/whitman-steadies-hp-but-big-challenges-remain

PC Magazine Best Products of 2011 - Best of the Year – Security

PC Magazine has released their best products of 2011, best of the year 2011 compilations. The compilation has their Gold and Silver products for approximately 20 categories, providing a paragraph of detail for each product. In the security category, below are some of the Gold recipients.

• Antispam – Cloudmark DesktopOne Basic
• Antivirus –Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus
• Security Suite – Norton Internet Security 2012

All the above (obviously), received Editors Choice designations. To view details about the security Gold and Silver recipients, as well as recipients in the other categories for PC Magazine Best Products of 2011 go to http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2396200,00.asp

More comprehensive reviews for the Gold and Silver recipients and their competitors can be viewed on pcmag.com. For a listing of a number of PC Magazine Best Internet Security Suites 2012 and Best Antivirus Software 2012, sorted by the number of stars received, go to http://kensek.blogspot.com/2011/08/best-internet-security-suites-2012-pc.html and http://kensek.blogspot.com/2011/08/best-antivirus-software-2012-pc.html , respectively.

San Francisco Tech-Security Conference – November 17

It was a full day of talks and a 50-company exhibitor room for attendees at this security event. Presentations were given by McAfee, Cyber-Ark, Axway, Centrify, WatchGuard, Netgear, Blue Coat, Invincea, and Endace.

The slick security award has to go to Invincea. They are a venture-backed software company. They provide desktop security to companies with Invincea™ Browser Protection. www.invincea.com Invincea™ Browser Protection shields PC users against all types of Web-borne threats by moving desktop Web browsers into a controlled virtual environment. Invincea creates a fully isolated browser environment to help deliver PC protection. The product automatically detects and terminates a threat in real time and disposes the tainted environment. It than restarts a new one.

SC Magazine loves the product. Peter Stephenson in the January issue of SC Magazine wrote, “What we liked: Ease of use, small footprint and very creative use of a virtual machine to contain the browser and keep the malware out of the computer” The company also has a Document Protection solution. Invincea is still a privately held company. No hints about an upcoming IPO. Let’s hear it for virtual machine technology. This goes well beyond what McAfee SiteAdvisor and AVG LinkScanner offer in protection.

It’s always interesting to talk to vendors while others are running around getting their “qualify for the drawings” card initialed. Some random observations:

Say “NGFW” and security companies will respond “Palo Alto Networks.” Other companies are offering the technology, but for the time being, Next Generation Fire Wall is Synonymous with Palo Alto Networks. They weren’t at this event, by the way, (cheapskates) while Fortinet, Websense, Blue Coat and SonicWall were.

Netgear presentation bite – “Experts believe Scareware is one of the payloads that make attackers the most money.” They pushed the layered defence (sic) strategy. Gartner gives them #1 share in the sub $5k market share and #4 in the sub $25k.

Invincea - “Polymorphics will make signatures obsolete.” “$398B of research has been put at risk because of China and Russia.” “Asking our users to make the correct decision every time is a complete pipe dream.” The presenter also showed a slide from a Cyveillance study showing that F-Secure Kaspersky and Nod32 (Eset) were the quickest for Day 1 Anti-Virus “Effectiveness”.

WatchGuard – Stated that surveys of employees have shown that they spend 3 hours daily, on average, at work on personal related web surfing. Much of their presentation focused on how their product delivers granular web application control.

Axway – Considers using the cloud to perform file transfer still to be not quite fully secure. He also quoted a Ponemon Institute that the average cost of a data breach is $202 per record or$6.6M per breach. They’re in the Leader’s Quadrant (Gartner) for Managed File Transfer, Business to Business Integration, and Email Encryption.

The primary focus of the presentations was on education/knowledge sharing with only a few slides at the end being devoted to product pitches. These presentations weren’t deep dives into the company’s technologies. For the most part stats tossed out were current.

Antivirus, antimalware vendors mentioned as being “under the hood” for different vendors’ products: Commtouch, Kaspersky, Sophos, AVG. Present at the show - Eset (showing some older studies, dudes), Kaspersky, McAfee, and Sophos.

Now About Those Tchotchkes

A marketing professional at a leading edge consumer software company believes that a company's standing on the innovation scale is directly related to the creativity of their tradeshow giveaways. That said – pens, stress balls, more pens, breath mints, more breath mints, an environmentally friendly shopping bag, a squishable car shaped stress ball, a year subscription for the company’s internet security suite, something to clean your mobile phone screen, pens with a blinking red ball at the top.

The most useful tchotchke – Tectia and their aluminum sport water bottle. Winner on the cool scale - some kind of battery power multi colored LED spinning fan “thing”. A quite optimus giveaway by Blue Coat. The most impressive giveaway at the end of the day - a $700 WatchGuard appliance.

The most attended presentation was the last one. Attendees had to be present and had to have had their gift drawing card initialed by participating vendors to be eligible for the drawings. Hence, the occasional mad dash of individuals to get those puppies signed.

About the Organizers

These events are put on by www.dataconnectors.com . It appears that about 50 of these are scheduled to take place in 2012.

RSA Conference 2011 February 14 through 18 in San Francisco

Look for serious and not so serious blogs about the companies appearing at RSA Conference 2011 (where the world talks security) to be written about here (about those companies who are at RSA, anyway). Who has the most visibility. What they’re talking about during the RSA security event in their booth. What they’re talking about in any keynotes they’re taking part in. Who among them has the best tchotchkes. http://www.rsaconference.com/2011/usa/index.htm . Quite an event, the RSA security conference is celebrating its 20th anniversary.

Symantec is one of three Golden Diamond sponsors. McAfee is one of three Platinum sponsors. Sophos and Websense are among the Gold sponsors. Trend Micro and Intel (owner of of the Platinum sponsors) are among the Silver sponsors for the event.

The Friday closing keynote will be given by former US President Bill Clinton (whose running mate, Al Gore, invented the Internet ;)) Re RSA - “W” across 3rd Avenue from RSA is one of the places where people hang. Keynote presenters are listed at http://www.rsaconference.com/2011/usa/agenda/keynotes.htm

Security Award Events Taking Place During RSA

Also taking place that week, though not part of the RSA Conference 2011:

The SC Magazine Awards 2011 (US) will be given out the evening of February 15 at the Intercontinental Hotel, just down the street from RSA. For a list of the finalists, go to

http://www.scmagazineus.com/2011-sc-awards-us-finalists/section/1908/ Tickets for the event are also on this site.

The Info Security Products Guide 2011 Global Product Excellence awards will be given out the evening of February 16. To view a list of the finalists, go to

http://www.infosecurityproductsguide.com/excellence/finalists.html Tickets for the event are also on this site.

AV Comparatives’ Latest Test Results For Anti-Virus Software (Proactive/Retrospective Test)

In May, testing organization AV Comparatives published their latest Proactive/Retrospective test report. This was for the on-demand detection of viruses/malware. This is one of several different tests they perform throughout the year.

Companies receiving “Advanced+ Certification” for their products – Trustport, G DATA, Kaspersky, Microsoft, AVIRA, ESET NOD32, F-Secure, BitDefender,and eScan.

For the proactive detection of new malware, the top ratings were achieved by

1. Trustport, Panda – 63%
2. G Data – 61%
3. Kaspersky, Microsoft – 59%
4. AVIRA – 53%
5. ESET, F-Secure- 52%

The order of the rest of the vendors in the above test – BitDefender, K7, ESET, Symantec (Norton), McAfee, AVG Technologies, Sophos, Avast, Norman, Trend Micro, PC Tools, and Kingsoft

All of the twenty anti-virus products tested were “paid” products with the exception of Avast! Free Anti-Virus 5.0. There was a mix of AV products for the home and business markets (some would say that having a mix like this doesn’t constitute “best practices, and that home should be compared against home, biz to biz, and free to free). Internet Security suites were not tested. The approximately 28k samples in the test were a mix of worms, backdoors, Trojans, and other malware and viruses.

The May (and November) retrospective tests evaluate products against new and unknown malware to measure the proactive detection capabilities (e.g. through heuristics, generic signatures, etc.). False positive rates are also factored into the evaluation. Products also use additional protection features like behavior blockers to protect against completely new/unknown malware.

AV Comparative’s test evaluates only the heuristic/generic detection of the products against unknown/new malware without the need to execute it.

People should go to the AV Comparatives website and download the complete report. http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/ondret/avc_report26.pdf .

AV Comparatives recommends that “you visit the vendor’s site and evaluate their software by downloading a trial version, as there are also many other features (e.g. firewall, HIPS, behavior blockers, etc.) and important things (e.g. price, graphical user interface, compatibility, etc.) for an Anti-Virus that you should evaluate by yourself. Even if quite important, the data provided in the test reports on this site are just some aspects that you should consider when buying Anti-Virus software.”

Note that there are other testing organizations as well. Individuals and companies evaluating AV and Internet Security SW should also look the others, at reviews, round-ups, and group tests performed by reputable testing organizations, and technology publications. Note carefully exactly what AV Comparatives tested.

Undoubtedly, companies will put their own spin on the test results.