p2pnet - rss feed: McAfee does poorly in AV sweepstakes
p2pnet.net news:- Many, if not most, ’studies’ you see aren’t commissioned to provide genuine information or data. The results are used to boost a product or service, or some other offering, often at the expense of a rival.
This is particularly true of corporate entertainment industry reports, but it’s not solely confined to them. Security companies, for example, are always releasing reports purpose-designed to prove their anti-virus software is better than everyone else’s.
Some of them even go so far as to offer advisory services. McAfee, for example, boasts fulsomely about its so-called SiteAdvisor which claims to be able to reliably, accurately and categorically define not only which spyware and malware appplications are dangerous, but also which web sites should be avoided.
AV-comparatives.org, however, is offering not one, but a number, of studies coordinated by the University of Innsbruck’s Andreas Clementi to look at how well various anti-virus applications actually do.
In the spotlight are: Avast! Professional Edition 4.7; AVG Anti-Malware 7.5; AVIRA AntiVir Personal Edition Premium 7.03; BitDefender Professional Plus 10; Dr.Web for Windows 95-XP 4.33.2; eScan Anti-Virus 8.0; ESET NOD32 Anti-Virus 2.70.23; Fortinet FortiClient 3.0; F-Prot for Windows 6.0.5.1; F-Secure Anti-Virus 7.01; G DATA AntiVirusKit (AVK) 17.0; Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6.0.2; McAfee VirusScan 11.1; Microsoft OneCare 1.5; Norman Virus Control 5.82; Symantec Norton Anti-Virus 14.0; and, TrustPort Antivirus Workstation 2.5
If and when you’re planning to spend money on one or other of the programmes, “visit the vendor’s site and evaluate their software by downloading a trial version, as there are also many other features (e.g. firewall, behaviorblocker, etc.) and important things (e.g. compatibility, graphical user interface, language, price, etc.) for an Anti-Virus that you should evaluate by yourself,” warns AV-comparatives.
It also provides forums where some manufacturers provide data and other kinds of input on their products.
The winner of what amounted to the anti-virus sweepstakes, as Ars Technica describes them, was Avira, “which managed to detect and defeat 71 percent of the unknown malware.” And, “Right behind it was the equally-obscure NOD32, which swept away 68 percent of the threats,” says the story.
What of the much-touted high-end commercial products? Most, “fared more poorly,” states Ars Technica, adding:
“Norton Antivirus and McAfee tied at a mere 24 percent, while Microsoft’s OneCare did even worse by only identifying 18 percent of the new threats. “Resting at the bottom of the barrel were Kaspersky and eScan at nine percent, and AVG, which detected only eight percent of malicious software in addition to producing many false positives.”
Also See:
should be avoided - McAfee SiteAdvisor ’study’, June 4, 2007
Ars Technica - Report: little-known AV packages outdo those of Symantec, McAfee, Microsoft, June 7, 2007
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
June 9th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
I have yet to see one single antivirus that beats avast! in my opinion. AVG introduces noticeable delays, yet seems to be the first free antivirus that people find out about. The reasons I like avast! over everything else:
* The home edition is FREE FREE FREE
* It has such low system requirements in mind during development that the impact on the system’s PERFORMANCE (the big thing that most AV products drag down significantly) is very minimal
* It can do boot-time scanning, which scans the system before the virus itself can actually load (unless the virus loads as a boot driver), and I have seen zero other products that do this so far
* It is updated extremely regularly (twice daily is the norm) and the minor notifications are not obnoxiously forced in front of what you’re doing like other products
No, I don’t work for ALWIL Software. I *do* service thousands of residential and business clients every year.
June 10th, 2007 at 10:20 am
I use NOD32 for my antivirus program. It’s really pretty impressive from a speed/non-interference-with-system-functioning point of view. And this is the second time I’ve read that NOD32 gets very high marks for detection capabilities.
The one thing in which NOD32 doesn’t do so well is the interface: compared to the others, it’s pretty technical.
June 11th, 2007 at 4:44 am
The figure quoted for Kaspersky Lab in this article is not the latest figure available from AV-Comparatives:
June 2007 AV-Comparatives On-Demand Proactive Detection Test: Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7.0
AV-Comparatives carried out a Retrospective Standalone Test of Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7.0 for its on-demand proactive detection capabilities (following on from the Standard Retrospective Test carried out in May 2007).
1) Unlike others, the product received an ‘Advanced’ rating of 35% (up from the 9% figure quoted in May 2007)
2) Furthermore, the product achieved a very low rate of false alarms. (Kaspersky Lab deliberately tunes its heuristics to avoid the risk of false positives.)
Andreas Clementi points out that since version 6.0 Kaspersky Lab includes an additional layer of protection, its real-time proactive defense module (PDM). Andreas points out in the test summary that when applied in conjunction with the PDM, this system works very well and users would achieve a substantially higher detection rate. Andreas states that it would be deserving of a “Proactive Detection Awardâ€.
June 11th, 2007 at 10:46 am
I agree Kaspersky is one of the best best AV Products.
I install the trial on problem machines that I suspect have a virus and it never fails to nail at least 9 or 10 that AVG Norton or McAfee couldn’t find.
As an IT Admin, I have recently switched my offices from McAfee Corprate to Kaspersky Products.
I also found that their Corp. Licensing is easy to setup and took only one 5 minute call to get the License and the product(which you simply download).
Cheers to all Kaspersky Users