AV-Comparatives, the August tests are on-line
As is tradition at the end of summer, from the Austrian labs of Andreas Clementi and the analysts team behind AV-Comparatives come the updated comparative tests on 16 among the most known antivirus on the market. As a recognized industry standard for evaluating the effectiveness of antivirus solutions, the Clementi’s comparatives put in comparison security software against more than 2.3 millions of malware samples variously assorted, further providing useful indications on the capabilities of the programs to avoid false positives and the total scanning speed.
The AV-Comparatives tests, that for the tightening admittance parameters already include or should include the best of the best of today’s security software, have been performed on the following antivirus/antimalware programs: avast! Professional Edition 4.8, AVG Anti-Virus 8.0, AVIRA AntiVir Premium 8.1, BitDefender Antivirus 11, eScan Anti-Virus 9.0, ESET NOD32 Anti-Virus 3.0, F-Secure Anti-Virus 2009, G DATA AntiVirusKit (AVK) 2009, Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009, McAfee VirusScan Plus 12.1, Microsoft OneCare 2.5, Norman Antivirus & Anti-Spyware 7.1, Sophos Endpoint Protection 7.5.1, Symantec Norton Anti-Virus 2009, TrustPort Antivirus Workstation 2.8, VBA32 Scanner for Windows 3.12.8.2.
Of the four yearly comparatives performed by AV-Comparatives, the August one is devoted to the analysis of the malware identification rates during on-demand scanning. The malicious software categories taken into account include: file virus (Windows), macro virus, scripts, worms, backdoors/bots, trojans. The more than 2 millions samples have been combined in two separate sets, the first (”SET A”) with malware collected by the company between August 2005 and September 2007 and the second (”SET B”) with those of the last 9 months. The test results report the scores earned with the single sets and both.
Talking about results, the figures are rather clear: considering the antivirus software scanning at the best of its capabilities, with the sets A & B taken separately or jointly AVIRA AntiVir stands out on the rest of the programs, identifying an overall 99,2% of the malware. At the second place comes G DATA AntiVirusKit with 99,1%, even if it’s good to underline that the software integrates the scanning engines developed by Kaspersky and Avast with all the advantages (superior recognition skills) and the drawbacks (heavily reduced performance) that follows.
The third place is shared by Symantec Norton Anti-Virus (97,9% of samples identified) and McAfee VirusScan in its Enterprise edition, containing the extra protection known as Artemis that hugely increases the software identification skills. On Artemis, that presently isn’t available in any consumer product, AV-Comparatives announces the performing of a custom test to be released later. It’s worth citing a certain drop for Kaspersky Anti-Virus, which overall identifies 95,1% of malware arriving only sixth when traditionally it has always leaded the rank together with AVIRA and a few others.
As of the false positives the best products are the Microsoft and McAfee ones (only one false alarm), followed by ESET NOD32 (7), F-Secure (11), Symantec (12), eScan (14), AVIRA (17) and the rest. The last one is Sophos, that fails 117 times and rates as malware some absolutely legitimate software. Where Sophos is able to sum an interesting score is in the samples scanning speed, placing itself at the second place behind Symantec and surpassing AVG, NOD32, McAfee, AVIRA and the all others.
As usual, at the end of the tests AV-Comparatives has appointed the three awards ADVANCED+, ADVANCED and STANDARD in regard of the identification rates. The first group (AVIRA, G DATA, Symantec, McAfee with Artemis, Avast, TrustPost, Kaspersky, AVG) includes the software that should offer the best protection against the known threats, while the latter (Microsoft OneCare and McAfee) picks out those programs that should be avoided or replaced with something better. Outside of any award is VBA32, that is absolutely the worst antivirus of the lot.
The full report is available in PDF format on the company servers, and it’s highly recommended a careful reading to get useful indications on the parameters to count for the choice of a good antivirus software, parameters that, especially in the case of the programs awarded with the ADVANCED+ level, should include features like the user interface, some possible extra services (e-mail and Internet protection, HIPS modules and proactive defense etc.), fewer false positives and an adequate scanning speed.
At last I point out, for who would be in search for a painless and prompt way to prove if the antivirus software is properly set in defense of the system, the post EICAR test file, antimalware testing with no collateral damages.
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