Best Antivirus Software - Readers Choice Awards 2011 – Antivirus.about.com

Mary Landesman and About.com have announced their Readers Choice Awards for Antivirus, Internet Security Suites, and Free Antivirus. The complete text and link to the article is below. These are popularity contests and don’t reflect the ability of the software to actually stop anything (though one would think that that’s what readers are interested in). For example, Rubenking of PC World tends to like Norton for their internet security suite. Comodo did win a www.download.com popularity context. The folks at Avira have to be pleased with the results below. No details on the number of participants, whether people could vote more than once, etc.

http://antivirus.about.com/od/antivirussoftwarereviews/ss/Best-Antivirus-Software-Winners_2.htm

Best Windows Antivirus for 2011

• GFI VIPRE Antivirus: 44%
• Avira AntiVir Premium: 28%
• ESET NOD32 Antivirus: 18%
• ZoneAlarm Antivirus: 6%
• Norton AntiVirus: 3%

Best Internet Security Suite for 2011

Some surprises in this table.

• Comodo Internet Security: 42%
• Panda Global Protection: 26%
• ESET Smart Security: 25%
• Kaspersky Internet Security: 4%
• Norton Internet Security: 3%

Best Free Antivirus

• Avira AntiVir Personal: 62%
• Avast! antivirus: 13%
• Microsoft Security Essentials: 10% (how did they do this?)
• AVG Free: 9%
• Panda Cloud Antivirus: 6%

People looking at the above, may want to look go to www.virusbtn.com , www.av-test.org, and www.av-comparatives.org prior to making a purchase decision or downloading. Alternatively, look at relevant blogs on this site! Go to www.kensek.blogspot.com to view results from these blogs, including tables showing the rankings of the antivirus and internet security suite products for 2012 that PC World has tested and reviewed, cross tabbed against some of the test organization's results. It is well worth reading Rubenking's reviews after looking at the rankings. http://kensek.blogspot.com/2011/08/best-internet-security-suites-2012-pc.html . There are also reviews on www.download.com by Rosenblatt.

Information Security and Techtarget Readers' Choice Awards 2011 Announced

Information Security announced their Readers’ Choice 2011 Awards on Monday. More than 1,500 voters participated in the survey. The nice thing about surveys is that companies can’t go and encourage their Facebook fans to vote early and often. The Chicago way.

In the category of Best Antimalware

• Gold - Eset NOD32
• Silver - Trend Micro OfficeScan
• Bronze - McAfee Total Protection for Endpoint - Enterprise Edition

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/guide/Best-Antimalware-Products-2011

As a sanity check on the Reader’s selections for Best Antimalware:

Eset and McAfee received a VB100 award in the August 2011 test. Trend Micro didn’t participate. http://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/archive/summary

Eset received 2 stars in the AV-comparatives.org May Anti-virus Comparative Retrospective Test. Neither McAfee nor Trend Micro participated.

http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/ondret/avc_retro_may2011.pdf

Eset and Trend Micro were certified in the AV-test.org Q2 test on Windows XP. McAfee failed to receive certification. http://www.av-test.org/en/tests/test-reports/quarter-22011/

The products tested above may not be the exact ones that were voted on for Reader’s Choice. Nonetheless, the results of these tests are probably a good acid test for the quality of the company’s products overall.

Bravo to Eset for being part of all three tests. The complete list of categories that companies received awards for are listed below as is the link to the article.

• Best Antimalware Products 2011
• Best Authentication Products 2011
• Best Intrusion Detection/Prevention Products 2011
• Best Identity and Access Management Products 2011
• Best Messaging Security Products 2011
• Best Mobile Data Security Products 2011
• Best Network Access Control Products 2011
• Best Policy and Risk Management Products 2011
• Best Secure Remote Access Products 2011
• Best SIM Products 2011
• Best Unified Threat Management Products 2011
• Best Vulnerability Management Products 2011
• Best Web Application Firewalls 2011
• Best Web Security Products 2011

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/guides/Information-Security-magazine-Readers-Choice-Awards-2011