AV-TEST Product Review and Certification Report – September, October 2012

During September and October 2012, AV-test (www.av-test.org ) evaluated 24 home user security products using their default settings.  They used the most current publicly available versions   for the testing. Generally, they were the 2013 versions.  Products were allowed to update themselves   time query their in-the-cloud services.  The test was done on Windows 7.

The   consumer   internet security products were tested in the areas of protection, repair, and usability.  The highest score possible in each category was 6.0.  So, the best possible total score was 18.0. The test was on Windows 7.   You’ll have to go to the av-test.org web site for the individual scores and to download free one-page reports on each of the companies. 

The top ten finishers were, Bitdefender Internet Security (they lost their only point on Usability), F-Secure Internet Security, BullGuard Internet Security, Kaspersky Internet Security, Symantec: Norton Internet Security, Check Point Zone Alarm Free, G Data Internet Security, Trend Micro Titanium Maximum Security, Avast Free, and AVG Internet Security.  Check Point and Avast had the top free products.

BitDefender isn't as well known to the thronging masses as a number of other AV or Internet Security companies.  They are active in the OEM business, offering SDK and rebranding alternatives for endpoint, network,  and cloud protection. In these situations (of course), you may never realize that BitDefender is under the hood.

 http://www.bitdefender.com/oem/#Overview

Microsoft Security Essentials failed the test with 10.5 while McAfee, Norman, and Panda were on the bubble at 11.0. This is a major black eye for the Microsoft Security Essentials product. They scored only 1.5 out of 6 for Protection.  For Removal, 3.5, and Usability, 5.5.

The top ten products are in the table below.  Click on the table to enlarge it.

 

As with all the other tests performed by reputable test groups, there's not a lot of correlation between the best known products and test results.

In March/April testing, the top three products were from BitDefender, F-Secure, and Kaspersky, respectively. 

 http://kensek.blogspot.com/2012/06/av-test-product-review-and.html

 

About AV-Test.org http://www.av-test.org

The AV-TEST Institute is a leading international and independent service provider in the fields of IT security and anti-virus research.  The aim of the research work carried out by AV-TEST is to directly detect the latest malware, to analyze it using state-of-the-art methods and to inform their customers of the top-quality results obtained.

Webroot SecureAnywhere 2013 – Webroot Takes the Gloves off versus other Antivirus 2013 Vendors

It has been less than eight weeks, (less than a month in many cases) since vendors have started releasing Antivirus 2013 products.  Webroot is challenging the other major antivirus vendors with a Webroot commissioned performance benchmark study,  “Webroot SecureAnywhere Cloud Antivirus vs. Seven Competitor Antivirus Products”. PassMark published this benchmark   report around September 12. 

The 2013 products in the report - Webroot SecureAnywhere, Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2013, Norton AntiVirus, AVG Anti-Virus 2013, McAfee Antivirus Plua,  and Microsoft Security Essentials.  The 2012 products in the test - ESET NOD32 Antivirus 5 and Trend Micro Titanium 2012.  Trend Micro Titanium 2013 has since been released.

The highest score obtainable was 112.  Webroot had the highest score with 103.  Surprise!  The next highest score was ESET with 62.  The lowest score was by McAfee AntiVirus Plus 2013 with 34. 

Once again, though, you have to consider the following.   Benchmarks are fine and good.  In the world of internet security, protection is the most important factor.  Everything else is secondary.  If products  have similar detection rates, costs, ease of use  and  performance benchmarks come into play. On a higher level, companies can do an  ROI analysis.  A strong argument can be made that purchasing security is like purchasing insurance. On a personal level, people don't do ROI calculations when they buy home or earthquake insurance, for example.

The performance metrics used were -  Scan Time, Installation Size, Installation Time, Registry Keys Added, Boot Time, User Interface Launch Time, Memory Usage during System Idle, Memory Usage during Initial Scan, Browse Time,  File Copy, Move and Delete,  Network Throughput,  File Format Conversion;  File Compression and Decompression; File Write, Open and Close  Scheduled Scan Time. 

Test results for SecureAnywhere 2012 are below (these organizations haven’t tested with 2013 products yet):

• In AV-Test.org’s latest test (July/August with 2012 products), 13.5 out of 18.   www.av-test.org
• Virus Bulletin VB100 Testing - One fail and two passes in the last twelve VB100 tests.  Webroot's last participation was in  December 2011.www.virusbtn.com
• AV-Comparative’s on Demand Detection of Malicious Software (March 2012) -   19 out of 20 (1 star, high degree of false positives). www.av-comparatives.org
• AV-Comparatives – Whole Product Dynamic Real World Protection Test - “Tested” (0 stars)
• Webroot SecureAnywhere  received  4.5 stars from PC Magazine in October 2011 and scored highly in the publications malware testing. Smaller sample sizes than the test organizations, however. The Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization prefers large samples. www.amtso.org . Two of their white papers are "Best Practices for Validation of Samples" and "Sample selection for Testing".

“Webroot SecureAnywhere Cloud Antivirus vs. Seven Competitor Antivirus Products” is available on the Webroot website.  Webroot also has  an interesting   eight question  total cost of ownership calculator for antivirus software  at http://www.webroot.com/En_US/business/land/calculator.html

Click on the below graphic to enlarge it. 

 

To see review scores for Internet Security 2013 and Antivirus 2013 solutions (PC Magazine and CNET), go to:

http://kensek.blogspot.com/2012/09/best-antivirus-2013.html

http://kensek.blogspot.com/2012/09/best-internet-security-suites-2013-best.html

About Passmark www.passmark.com

PassMark® Software Pty Ltd is a privately owned software development group with a head office in Sydney, Australia and a branch office in California, United States.

August 8 Addendum - Where Have All the Free Antivirus Downloads Gone

August 8 – Note the comments at the end of the blog. This probably explains what is happening.















July 22 - The one week change in downloads was not not kind to any of the below vendors. Not a lot can be read into one week. Could mean vacations. Could mean that there were no major outbreaks that would cause people to download a copy, either on a first time basis, or to use because their existing product had failed. The below are in (000) for weeks ending July 15 and 22, respectively.














For the past several years, AVG Technologies has led the download battle on CNET, with weekly downloads on www.download.com on the order of 1.2 to 2.0 million. Avast has typically been second, a few hundred thousand behind AVG Technologies with Avira a poor 3rd. The sum of the latter two has typically been greater than AVG’s. Avast has blogged that the sum of a handful of downloads on other sites has given them a larger installed base. However, each firm defines what constitutes an active account differently.

For the week ending 7/16 AVG has gone below a million on www.download.com. Avast has dropped "way" below a million and now ranks 4th on the www.download.com site.

• AVG – 986k
• Avira – 261k
• Ad-Aware – 238k
• Avast – 173k
• Comodo – 89k

The above could represent (a) a major changing of the guard in “free” (b) potentially a slowdown in downloads (c) slower churn among the major vendors (d) Microsoft’s free product cannibalizing everyone (e) glitches at www.download.com

The marketing people at Avast, in particular have to be saying “Dám si jedno pivo prosím”, and not in a happy way, with the decrease in downloads. The gap in downloads between them and AVG Technologies has increased to over 800k. Ouch.

It’ll be interesting to see what Opswat’s September market share figures will show. From “June 2011 OPSWAT Report on Worldwide Antivirus Application Market Share” http://kensek.blogspot.com/2011/03/march-2011-opswat-report-on-worldwide.html


Worldwide Market Share Leaders – Product

• Microsoft Security Essentials – 10.66% (was 3rd in March report)
• Avira Antivir Personal – 10.18% (was 2nd in March report)
• Avast Free Antivirus – 8.66% (was 1st in March report)

About OPSWAT – www.opswat.com

Founded in 2002, OPSWAT is the industry leader in software management SDKs, interoperability certification and multiple engine scanning solutions. With both manageability and multi-scanning products, OPSWAT offers simplified and comprehensive SDKs that reduce time and costs for your engineering and testing teams

Where Have All the Free Anti-Virus Downloads Gone?

For the past several years, AVG Technologies has led the download battle on CNET, with weekly downloads on the order of 1.2 to 2.0 million. Avast has typically been second, a few hundred thousand behind AVG Technologies and Avira a poor 3rd. However, the sum of the latter two has typically been greater than AVG’s. Avast has blogged that the sum of a handful of downloads on other sites has given them more downloads than AVG.

For the week ending 7/16 AVG has gone below a million on www.download.com.

• AVG – 986k
• Avira – 261k
• Ad-Aware – 238k
• Avast – 173k
• Comodo – 89k

The above could represent (a) a major changing of the guard in “free” (b) potentially a slowdown in downloads (c) slower churn among the major vendors (d) Microsoft’s free product cannibalizing everyone (e) glitches at www.download.com (f) major slowdown overall

The marketing people at Avast, in particular have to be saying “Dám si jedno pivo prosím”, and not in a happy way, with the decrease in downloads. The gap in weekly downloads between them and AVG Technologies has increased to over 800k. Ouch.

It’ll be interesting to see what Opswat’s September market share figures will show. From “June 2011 OPSWAT Report on Worldwide Antivirus Application Market Share”

Worldwide Market Share Leaders – Product

• Microsoft Security Essentials – 10.66% (was 3rd in March report)
• Avira Antivir Personal – 10.18% (was 2nd in March report)
• Avast Free Antivirus – 8.66% (was 1st in March report)


About OPSWAT

Founded in 2002, OPSWAT provides soft¬ware engineers and IT professionals with development tools and data services to power manageability and security solutions. www.opswat.com