Anti-Virus: Which is the best?

Anti-virus protection has become essential. Malicious code can steal personal details, hijack systems and Internet connection resources, irreparably damage files, or simply cause havoc for the sake of it. For private users this can be a nuisance, and for businesses and corporations it can be a catastrophe.

Anti-Virus Comparatives (AVC) and Virus Bulletin have both released the results of recent tests carried out on a range of the most popular anti-virus programs.

AVC conducts two separate tests. The first tackles on-demand scanning detection of over 1.5-million different virus and malware variants that have been encountered over the 7 month period leading up the August 2009 report.
The second test analyses retrospective/proactive detection of new and unknown malware.

The graph below summarises the on-demand tests – the overall detection rate, false positives (FP), and scanning speed in MB/sec are indicated – and the retrospective/proactive detection rates.

The Virus Bulletin tests measure a product’s reactive and proactive malware detection capabilities across four sets of malware samples. The first three sets test the reaction of developers and labs to new malware by exposing the software to new threats discovered in the three weeks leading up to the submission for testing.

The final set exposes the product to threats detected in the week after submission, gauging the ability of the product to proactively react to unknown threats. Combined, these tests give a good indication of the overall effectiveness of a product in real-world situations. An overall ‘RAP’
percentage score is given to rate the product. The top 12 products for the testing period of June 2009 are indicated in the table below.

From these two sets of results it would appear that Avira Antivirus has one of the best detection rates for both known and unknown threats, as well as a pretty fast scanning speed. Avira does however return a number of false positives, which can be almost as annoying as the real thing, if the virus alert stops all productivity on a system until it is resolved.

Although not tested by Virus Bulletin, G DATA comes in second on the AVC tests with a good proactive detection rate and a low number of false positives. The well known Kaspersky and ESET products also post decent results.

Probably the best known on the AVC list, Norton AntiVirus, shows poor results in the proactive/reactive area. Symantec Endpoint Protection doesn’t perform much better on the Virus Bulletin tests, being bested by AVG.

In the AVC tests, Microsoft’s Security Essentials (MSE) shows good results for a new, free product. AVGs free offering loses out to MSE in proactive/reactive detection, but slightly outpaces it with on-demand scanning detection and speed. MSE was not available during the Virus Bulletin test.

Anti-virus software – what do you use?

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