The IT Nerd

AV-Comparatives, the independent ISO-certified security software evaluation lab, has released the latest results from the Business Main-Test Series, which evaluated a range of anti-virus products in business environments. This report is brought in the interim of the full Performance Test and product reviews, which will be released in July.   

In business environments, it is usual for products to be configured by the system administrator in accordance with vender’s guidelines. With the Enterprise Main-Test Series, AV-Comparatives invited all vendors to configure their respective products towards an enterprise-first environment. The applied settings are then used across all Enterprise Tests over the year. AV-Comparatives has listed all relevant deviations from default settings.  

The following products (latest version available at time of testing) were tested under Windows 10 64-bit systems: Acronis, Avast, Bitdefender, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Cybereason, Elastic, ESET, G Data, K7, Kaspersky, Malwarebytes, Microsoft, Sophos, Trellix, VIPRE, VMware and WatchGuard.  

The Real-World Protection Test examines the performance of leading antivirus solutions to assess their capabilities in conditions experienced every day by users around the world. The interim results of this the Real-World Protection Test are based on a set of 373 live test cases (malicious URLs found in the field), tested from the beginning of March until the end of April. Of the 18 vendors tested, nine received a 99% and above protection rate, with Bitdefender and G Data earning the highest protection rate score of 99.7%.  

The Malware Protection Test assesses a security program’s ability to protect a system against infection by malicious files before, during or after execution. For this test, 1,007 recent malware samples were used. Of the 18 vendors tested, 14 received a 99% or above Malware Protection Rate, with VMware, Acronis, Bitdefender and Trellix scoring the highest.  

To ensure that the tested programs do not protect the system at the expense of high false-alarm rates, a false-positives test is also run for the Malware Protection Test. False positives run on a scale of ‘Remarkably High’ to ‘Very Low’. A Low to Very-Low rate of false positives is considered anything below 15, with the highest number of false positives being greater than 125. From this year onwards, products are required to have a false-positive rate on non-business files below the ‘Remarkably High’ threshold in order to be approved. As of the March-Aril Business Test, Acronis, ESET, Kaspersky, Microsoft, Avast, Bitdefender, Cybereason, Sophos, VIPRE, VMware and WatchGuard have scored either ‘Low’ or ‘Very Low’. 

The full report, including Performance Testing and product reviews, will be released in July. To be certified in July 2022 as an ‘Approved Business Product’ by AV-Comparatives, the tested products must score at least 90% in the Malware Protection Test, with zero false alarms on common business software, a rate below ‘Remarkably High’ for false positives on non-business files and must score at least 90% in the overall Real-World Protection Test over the course of four months, with less than one hundred false alarms on clean software/websites. 

The full results of the March-April Business Test Factsheet are available here: 

AV-Comparatives, a provider of independent comparative tests and reviews for antivirus products, has released the latest security software evaluation results of its Malware Protection Test for the month of March, and the factsheet for the Real-World Protection Test, carried out between February and March.

The Malware Protection Test report can be found here: 

The Real-World Protection Test report can be found here: 

These tests examined the performance of leading antivirus solutions in order to assess their capabilities in conditions experienced every day by users around the world. 

The antivirus products used in the test are installed on individual fully patched Microsoft Windows 10 64-Bit computers, which are connected to the internet and updated each day as well as before every single test. 

The interim results of this the Real-World Protection Test are based on a set of 362 live test cases (malicious URLs found in the field). The full report, covering four months of testing, will be released in June.

The following products (latest version available at time of testing) were tested: Avast Free Antivirus, AVG Free Antivirus, Avira Prime, Bitdefender Internet Security, ESET Internet Security, G Data Total Security, K7 Total Security, Kaspersky Internet Security, Malwarebytes Premium, McAfee Total Security, Microsoft Defender, Panda Free Antivirus, NortonLifeLock Norton 360 Deluxe, TotalAV Antivirus Pro, Total Defense Essential Anti-Virus, Trend Micro Internet Security and VIPRE Advanced Security.

The test results showed that: 

• Avira achieved perfect protection and a low rate of false positives. 
• AVG, Avast, ESET, Kaspersky, Microsoft and VIPRE achieved nearly perfect protection and a low rate of false positives.
• NortonLifeLock, Trend Micro and Malwarebytes achieved perfect protection and a higher rate of false positives. 

While all products in the test are unanimously viewed as successful participants, AV-Comparatives does issue caution to the products with a higher rate of false positives as it can lead to a less thorough and more time-consuming user experience. 

As part of AV-Comparatives ongoing Consumer Main-Test Series, the Malware Protection Test for consumer security solutions evaluated 17 popular anti-malware programs to assess their ability to detect and block malicious files before, during or after execution. This test examines a product’s ability to prevent a malicious program from making any changes to the system. The test set used for this test consisted of 10,040 malware samples, assembled after consulting telemetry data with the aim of including recent, prevalent samples that are endangering users in the field. To ensure that the tested programs do not protect the system at the expense of high false-alarm rates, a false-positive test was also run. 

The products tested by AV-Comparatives were: Avast Free Antivirus, AVG AntiVirus Free, Avira Prime, Bitdefender Internet Security, ESET Internet Security, G Data Total Security, K7 Total Security, Kaspersky Internet Security, Malwarebytes premium, McAfee Total Protection, Microsoft Defender Antivirus, NortonLifeLock Norton 360 Deluxe, Panda Free Antivirus, TotalAV Antivirus Pro, Total Defense Essential Antivirus, Trend Micro Internet Security and VIPRE Advanced Security. 

A total of 11 products reached the highest award level, Advanced+. These products were: NortonLifeLock, Bitdefender, Avast, AVG, Kaspersky, Total Defense, VIPRE, McAfee, Avira, Microsoft and TotalAV.