AV Comparatives Performance Test – Impact of Security Software on System Performance Report October 2015

AV Comparatives has released their Performance Test – Impact of Security Software on System Performance Report. Nineteen products were tested. Eleven products received three stars.  The top three products were in order,  Avira, Avast, and Kaspersky.   Congrats to these three!  Products tested were a combination of free and paid, antivirus, and internet security suites.  The hall of shame award for this test  goes to Fortinet and ThreatTrack; both received one star.  Windows 10 systems were used during the test.

Note that this test doesn’t test  an ability to protect against malware. For that, you would have to look at other tests by AV-Comparatives. In a tie-breaking situation between a few products that performed equally well at stopping and removing malware, the performance test could be a tiebreaker. 

To access the and download the report:  http://www.av-comparatives.org/performance-tests/ 

www.AV-Comparatives.org  used  the performance testing suite PC Mark 8 Professional, to measure system impact for the  test.

AV-Comparatives File Detection Test – September 2015

Av-Comparatives prolific team of writers and testers has released their File Detection Test – September 2015. Nine products received three stars. Avira and BitDefender topped the 21 products in the test.   Their false positive rate was only 0.2%. Other companies receiving three stars, in alphabetical order, were Bullguard, Emisoft, eScan, ESET, Kaspersky, Lavasoft, and Panda.  You can download the report  to see the actual order.

ESET, Microsoft, and Panda had zero false positives The hall of shame award for this test goes to AVG Technologies with a false positive rate 32 times larger Avira and Bitdefender, at 6.5%, (139 false positives).

About the AV-Comparatives  File Detection Test

The awards for the File Detection Test were based on a combination of detection rates and false positives.   The File Detection Test assesses the ability of antivirus programs to detect malicious files on a system. It can identify malware attacks from sources other than the Internet, and it  can identify  malicious files already present on the system.

 “With more than 130000 samples in the test, AV-Comparatives uses one of the largest sample collection worldwide to provide statistically valid results”, according to AV-Comparatives’ Andreas Clementi.

ABC Award for the  File Detection Test

The ABC award (Avoids Being Compared) goes to Symantec. The File Detection Test  is one of the core tests the organization performs. Companies cannot choose which of these core tests to be in. It's all or none.  The ABC award is not part of AV-Comparatives’ test   program!

The document can be downloaded at:    

http://www.av-comparatives.org/comparatives-reviews/ 

The  file detection rate of a product is only one aspect of a complete anti-virus product. AV-Comparatives also provides a whole-product dynamic “real-world” protection test, as well as other test reports that cover different aspects/features of the products.  For those interested, you can easily do a deep dive into individual company’s historical performances on tests or sign up for the newsletter.   Check them out.  Other documents are available for download from the AV-comparatives website  (www.av-comparatives.org ) website.

Av-Comparatives – Review of IT Security Suites for Small Business – September 2015

Av-Comparatives has released their Review of IT Security Suites for Small Business   - September 2015.  The review   examines security suites suitable for a company running either the Foundation or the Enterprise edition of Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2. The Foundation version is suitable for small companies with up to 15 users (from the Microsoft website), while the Essentials version allows an additional ten users. The report considers products for a network of up to 25 client PCs, with one file server/domain controller.

AV-Comparatives’ review covered only the essential everyday tasks needed in all networks. However some products have additional features and could be used for significantly bigger networks reviewed. Products in the Review of IT Security Suites are:

Bitdefender Endpoint GravityZone, ESET Remote Administrator, F-Secure Protection Service For Business, G Data Antivirus Business, Kaspersky Small Office Security, McAfee SaaS Endpoint Protection, Sophos Endpoint Security and Control Cloud, Symantec Endpoint Protection, and Trend Micro Worry Free Business Security Services.  Symantec! They’re here.  They are not present on many of AV-Comparatives’ reviews (companies cannot selectively opt out of a subset of core reviews; it’s all or none).

The document itself runs around 90 pages.  Each product is given a comprehensive overview.  Major categories that AV-Comparatives looked at include:

Supported OS, Documentation, Management Console (cloud based, server based, and virtual appliance) Respective endpoint protection programs for Windows and Mac OS clients, Window Server Protection Software, and Summary

All of the products received the AV-Comparatives’ Approved Business Award.

The advantages of a document like this include, the depth of comparison, the same features/functionality are looked at for each product, and the review was done by a known test organization. A company would not have the time (and for a Small Business, the expertise) to go into this depth for nine products.  Companies looking to replace their current product being used should find this report a valuable (at no charge!) resource.

For those who like to compare products on a feature grid, suffice it to say that AV-Comparatives provides a sizeable (Multiple fingers and toes! Approximately 100 rows) grid as part of the document. This document is more than adequate for you to select one product for your environment or select a short list for evaluation.

The document can be downloaded at:    

   http://www.av-comparatives.org/corporate-reviews/

The “Death of Antivirus Software is Greatly Exaggerated”, as written in an article in CSO Online (and others).  You still need protection from these threats, whether the protection is provided from software on the device or from the cloud. Greatly Exaggerated

 Av-Comparatives has a fantastic library of test documents. The site organization scores high on surveys.  Check them out.  Other documents are available for download from the AV-comparatives website (www.av-comparatives.org ) website.

 

 

Av-Comparatives Summary Report – 2014

For those who haven’t made a habit of downloading and looking at the many test reports  test group AV-Comparatives publishes, their AV-Comparatives Summary Report of anti-virus products has been released.  Some of the products in the test were the company’s internet security offerings. The report lists the winners in a number of categories:

• Overall winner
• Top rated products
• Real world protection test
• File detection
• False positives
• Overall performance 
• Proactive (heuristic/behaviors)
• Malware removal

Congratulations to BitDefender for being product of the year, receiving 3 stars in all the tests! Two other companies achieved this level with their products, Kaspersky, and Eset.

Most of the products tested were “paid” versions, products from Panda, LavaSoft, and Avast being the exceptions.  Among these three, Panda was the “winner”, finishing twelfth overall.  In alphabetical order, the bottom three companies were AhnLab, McAfee, and ThreatTrack Vipre.

This 151 page report also contains an extensive user interface review section of almost two dozen products.  One of the companies on the list even begins with an S.  Sorry. It’s not Symantec.  One of these days, they’ll step up and be tested.

The demise of anti-virus products and companies offering them  is vastly pre-mature.  The endpoint needs protection. The level of protection provided by these products is superior to that provided years ago, when heuristic technology wasn’t in many endpoint solutions, and there were no cloud solutions for the endpoint. Leave your laptop or tablet unprotected at your own risk!

This report demonstrates quite clearly that the market share leaders in the endpoint security space are not necessarily providing the best security nor performance.  Kaspersky, and Eset, are known in the industry but not as much to the public.  But you can buy them online and in some stores.  

BitDefender has an active and successful OEM program for their antimalware engine. Download and take a look at the AV-Comparatives Anti-Virus Comparative Report.  It’s free. And in 2015, do look at their other reports.  You can also go onto their site and view their results from their dynamic  Real World Test.    http://www.av-comparatives.org/dynamic-tests/   

About AV-Comparatives (www.av-comparatives.org )

AV-Comparatives is an independent 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.  Currently, the  AV-Comparatives' Real-World Protection Test is the most comprehensive and complex test available when it comes to evaluating the real-life protection capabilities of antivirus software

A Lighter Look at RSA 2013 San Francisco

RSA 2013 San Francisco was well attended.  There were over twenty thousand attendees.  Over 350 vendors participated in the trade show portion AhnLab owned the view from outside Moscone Center with flags promoting  their presence at the event.  Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was the featured keynote speaker, the last day of event.   You know you’ve been in security for awhile when you go to one booth and recognize a few people that you’ve worked with, at different companies.

Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), seemed to be the acronym du jour for RSA 2013 San Francisco this year.  There were a number of firewall vendors, as well.  Websense had a huge wall touting the results of a Miercom   test with their Web Security Gateway Anywhere appliance, versus a handful of competitors.  In looking at 2.26 million URLs, they identified and blocked over 132 thousand bad URLs.  The least effective result was achieved by FireEye who blocked 171 with their Web MPS 1300 appliance.  The report is available on the Websense web site.  Other companies in the test included Blue Coat, Cisco IronPort, and McAfee.  Germany had a pavilion with a number of companies.  China did as well.  Huawei,  from China, had a large booth in the corner of the exhibition hall.  No 60 Minute people were around.  The usual antivirus and internet security vendors were present; Trend Micro, McAfee, Symantec, Sophos, and ESET were there. NSS was distributing their latest firewall report.  WatchGuard was probably not pleased with the result.

However, enough about security.  What were the tchotchkes like?  Dentists appeared to sponsor many of the giveaways, since candy was rampant.  The usual pens and stress balls were all over the place.  More than a handful of booths were giving away quite nice water bottles.  Three motorcycles, including a Harley Davidson, were being given away.  The event was lighter than usual on tee shirts this year, but they were available at the Check Point, Kaspersky, AhnLab, and Trend Micro booths.  .  AhnLab had a slot machine with the grand prize being $10 thousand.  Light sabers were being given away.  A wookie and Leia (cinnabon hairstyle and all) were hanging in one booth along with the white storm troopers.   

There was a huge line for autographed copies of Kevin Mitnick’s latest book, The Art of Deception.  Likewise for Bruce Schneier and his latest book.  A $35 mini speaker was another giveaway at one booth, a company branded Rubik’s cube at another.  One company gave away a 3 feet long remote control helicopter at the end of each presentation.  Very cool.  Copious amounts of food and alcohol was served Monday evening during the two-hour preview to the show.  One company had a box to put one of your tchotchkes in.  A lucky person was going to win the whole box.  Seinfeld’s “no soup for you” guy was at the show for people wanting to have their picture taken with him.  Kaspersky himself showed up at the Kaspersky booth.  The Kaspersky  booth was serving most excellent kaspertinis at the show on Wednesday.  Bravilna.

AV-Comparatives Anti-virus Comparative Summary Report 2012, BitDefender Named Product of the Year

Test group AV-Comparatives has released their Anti-virus Comparative Summary Report 2012.  This quite thorough 180 page  report contains a summary of the winning products for the test they performed in 2012, and  also contains an extensive 150 plus page user interface review section.A great report to download.

On an overall basis, AV-Comparatives, gave eight company's products their Top Rated designation.  In alphabetical order, these were  Avast, Avira,  Bitdefender,  BullGuard, ESET, F-Secure, G DATA, and  Kaspersky. Congratulations to these companies! 

For the individual   tests, the 2012 report lists the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Medal recipients.   To view the Silver and Bronze recipients, you’ll have to download the free report. Below are the Gold Medal Recipients.

Gold Medal Recipients - Summary Report 2012

• Product of the Year – Bitdefender (G Data and Kaspersky, were awarded Bronze and Silver)
• File Detection – Avira
• Whole-Product “Real-World” Dynamic Protection - BitDefender (a nice interactive report)
• Proactive (Heuristic) Detection/Protection - A tie.  BitDefender and Kaspersky
• False Positive – Microsoft
• Overall Performance (Low System Impact) – Webroot
• Anti-Phishing Protection – BitDefender
• Malware Removal – A tie, BitDefender and Kaspersky

Congratulations to the Gold Medal recipients listed above and to the Silver and Bronze Medal Recipients listed in the 2012  report!

AC-comparatives encourages people trying to select a product to go to the vendor’s websites, download a trial version, and try products for themselves.  Many vendors have multiple flavors of internet security suites, each with their own spin on additional features.  Many offer multi-user and multi-year licenses.  One thing not to do.  Don’t chose based on how many Facebook Fans like the product.   

Symantec doesn’t appear in this report.  In order to be tested and reported on by AV-Comparatives, vendors have to agree to participate in all the tests.  Symantec chose not to do this.  Hence, they’re not listed in any of the tests. Steve Bennett.This could be the year.

The report also has a great  link that lets you select a year and view a one page report listing all vendors and how many stars they received for each test they were in. The most stars a vendor could receive on a single test was  three.  They could also receive two, one, and tested.  A perfect score for the year – twenty seven.  BitDefender received twenty six  in 2012.  

Freemium Vendors

The freemium vendors in the report were Avast, AVG Technologies, Avira, Panda, and PC Tools.  As mentioned above,  nine different tests with a potential total of twenty seven stars. 

• Avast – 22 stars
• Avira – 22 stars (yes, a tie)
• Panda - 19 stars
• AVG Technologies – 14 stars
• PC Tools – 13 stars

Avast and Avira received the same number of stars in seven of the nine tests and were both among the AV-Comparatives eight top products for 2012.   Avast wins the Czech crown for the year.  

About AV-comparatives     www.av-comparatives.org

AV-Comparatives is an Austrian Non-Profit-Organization.  They provide independent Antivirus software tests free to the public.  Go to their website to view all the great comparative reports and surveys they publish.  A great number of their reports are free.

Virus Bulletin VB100 Awards – December 2012

Virus Bulletin has released  the results of  their latest VB100 testing.  Many, but not all of the products tested were 2013 versions.    Symantec, Avira, Webroot (this makes one year) and Trend Micro (several years for Trend) were not part of the test.  Sophos, Kaspersky, Avast, AVG Technologies, and ESET were.

About a third of the products tested failed to receive a VB100 award this time.  A cone of shame to the following –  BeyondTrust, Commtouch, ESTsoft, FileMedic (formerly MKS) Filseclab, K7 Computing, Norman, Roboscan, Total Defense Consumer, VIRUSfighter Pro, and Zeobit.

A summary of the full  results is at the link below. Congratulations to those receiving the VB100.   You can  buy the full test results or subscribe to Virus Bulletin to obtain them. 

 https://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/archive/test?recent=1

Results from this should be looked at in conjunction with tests from other test groups such as www.av-test.org    and www.av-comparatives.org .  In addition,   it’s not how the company has performed on the VB100 test over years.  It’s only the last couple of years that are relevant.   When looking at a company’s award page, verify which product was tested.

VB100 Test Methodology

The purpose of the VB100 comparative is to provide insight into the relative performance of the solutions taking part in the tests, covering as wide a range of areas as possible within the limitations of time and available resources.  More details are available at

http://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/about/methodology.xml

UK based Virus Bulletin started in 1989.  They provide PC users with a regular source of intelligence about computer viruses, their prevention, detection, and removal, and how to recover programs and data following an attack.  The Virus Bulletin website is at www.virusbtn.com 

OPSWAT Market Share Report - Antivirus Market Analysis: December 2012

OPSWAT Inc. has released their December 2012 market share report, “Antivirus Market Analysis: December 2012”.  The data OPSWAT used for this market share report was collected between November 16, 2011 and November 15, 2012.  It's worthwhile to check out the detailed report.  You can also learn more about OPSWAT, their reports, products and some free tools they have available.  (To be discussed on another blog).  One aspect of this market share report is that it doesn’t go into the market shares these vendors have on tablets (and smart phones).  This will become increasingly more relevant in 2013.   

A Global Analysis

Avast has to be happy.  They’re the global market share leader, though Microsoft is catching up.  They maintain nice leads over the other well-known freemium antivirus vendors, Avira and AVG Technologies.  AVG Technologies may not care as much since their    revenue stream  from Google and Yahoo will become increasingly more important (a separate discussion).  In some respects, the below isn’t great for Kaspersky since one of their corporate objectives is to surpass Trend Micro in total revenues. 

OPSWAT Market Share Report Top Five  

The Top Five in antivirus vendor market share were Avast (17.5%), Microsoft (16.8%), ESET (10.8%), Symantec (10.5%), and Avira (10.4%).     

Congratulations to the Top Five!  Largest market share loss, AVG Technologies at 1.3%.  AVG has been getting a lot of downloads of their free  (and paid) products running on Android, however.   This product came from their acquisition of DroidSecurity.  DroidSecurity (was first and the market leader)  had over 2.5 million downloads of their products prior to the 2010 acquisition. Avira, Avast, and Norton also offer free Android solutions.

http://kensek.blogspot.com/2012/12/avg-updates-its-antivirus-for-android.html

 

You can click on the above to enlarge it.

In the September report, the order of the Top Five vendors:  Avast, Microsoft, Avira, and AVG Technologies.

Avast had cancelled an IPO in late July.  You have to wonder when that will take place.  http://kensek.blogspot.com/2012/07/avast-to-have-their-initial-public.html

A North America Centric View

Microsoft has a pretty incredible 32.0% share, gaining 10%.  The others in the Top Five in order, Symantec, Avast, AVG Technologies, and ESET.  Largest loss, AVG Technologies at 1.7%.  Symantec and Avast achieved small gains in share of 0.6% and 0.8%, respectively.  Microsoft has quickly become the 800-pound gorilla in Antivirus and Free Antivirus marketshare.

You can click on the above to enlarge it.

But How Well Do These Products Perform in third Party Testing?

That’s always an important question.  In AV-Comparatives September Anti-Virus Comparative “File Detection Test of Malicious Software”, the top five products overall were from,  in order Avira, Trend Micro, F-Secure, Kaspersky, and Bitdefender.  ESET was 15^th, Microsoft was 17^th .Symantec hasn’t been part of 2012 testing (they wanted to pick and choose tests to participate in. )

 http://kensek.blogspot.com/2012/10/av-comparatives-file-detection-test-of.html

All of the December top five with the exception of Microsoft (didn’t participate) received October VB100 Awards.  http://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/archive/summary
 

What about Correlation with 3rd Party Real World Dynamic Testing?

The short answer, there’s no correlation.  From the  December AV-Comparatives “Whole Product Dynamic ‘Real World’ Protection Test",  Avira (8^th) Avast (9^th) and ESET (11^th), all received two stars, while BitDefender, G Data, Qihoo, Kaspersky and BullGuard all received three stars.

An issue for all these products is product churn.  Free competitive upgrades are often available.  With free products, switching costs to another free product is zero.  On www.download.com at CNET, Avast had 1.39 million downloads for the week  ending December 9, while AVG had 0.97 million downloads.  Annualizing these come to about 52 million downloads each. Major churn "has" to be occurring, or a product is downloaded to fix a problem an already installed product missed, and then removed.   

About OPSWAT www.opswat.com   

Founded in 2002, OPSWAT is the industry leader in software management SDKs, interoperability certification, and multiple-engine scanning solutions.

OPSWAT market share reports are available at http://www.opswat.com/media/reports   

About AV-Comparatives.org   

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