Against Unknown Viruses, Avira AntiVir the Winner For Now

KingofGnG writes "AV-Comparatives, the Austrian team of experts dedicated to antivirus tests acknowledged as a reference point in the field, has published the second part of the mid-year comparative, an ideal addendum to the one already released last September. This time the aim is to evaluate the antimalware tools' effectiveness against unknown threats in a test scenario meant to prove the heuristic part and the generic markers of the on-demand scanning engines." The best in show (of 16 anti-malware packages evaluated), Avira AntiVir was able to find 71% of the unknown malware it was exposed to in the first week, dropping to 67% after the fourth.

Comments

Now If only . . .

[Cyberllama]

. . . someone could find a way to get rid of its horrible "zomg hackers are after you, give us some monies" pop-up that comes up at 10:30 every tonight and alt-tabs me out of anything else I might be doing. I realize the free version is free, and apparently that pop-up ad justifies, but *must* it also alt-tab me out of games? That's pretty obnoxious.

Re:Missing some market leaders

[girlintraining]

It could be because Trend Microsystems has gone after people who have tried to benchmark their software in the past, claimed to have exclusive patents to the very concept of antivirus scanning, etc. They don't exactly have a great reputation for supporting fair marketing and being open about how their product works... Witness how many legitimate products get flagged as "hacker tools" (like Angry IP Scanner), while their commercial counterparts are ignored (ostensibly after paying them off to get off their little black list).

I say, it could be.

Re:My antivirus research for my IT department

[St. Alfonzo]

"[...]it's the de-facto number one scanner in Russia and surrounding area (you know, where all the viruses come from?)."

Ignoring the assumption that all viruses come from Russia, wouldn't that make it more likely that the virus developers would make sure their viruses can evade detection under it?

Re:mine is better

[ClosedEyesSeeing]

Mine is better - remove the cat5 (or phone) cable. I'd like to see the chances of something getting in then! (from the Web, stupid users with viruses on portable media excluded from test results)

Re:mine is better

[lysergic.acid]

still, i think a better (more useful) test would be conducted by:

1. enlisting a 100 or so test subjects from various non-technical (in terms of computer knowledge) backgrounds.
2. give each one of the 9 best-selling anti-virus solutions to 10 different volunteers.
3. give the last 10 volunteers a 2-week course on basic computer security and malware-prevention.
4. subject all 100 subjects to the same gauntlet of viruses/trojans/malware over a 6-month period. (perhaps 4-5 viruses a week, for a total of around 120 threats tested)
5. note how many infections per person each group averaged, how many false-positives each group reported, and how much time/productivity was lost due to the threats & false-positives--for instance, time spent on reboots, reformats, dealing with virus alerts, waiting for anti-virus updates, etc.
6. lastly, measure the cost-effectiveness of the anti-virus solution used in each of the 10 groups.

i suspect that preventative education/training is probably the most effective method of combating viruses & malware. and though it might not be cost-effective in the short-term, it might be cheaper to train long-term employees how to avoid viruses/malware than to pay for yearly-subscriptions and still suffer down-time and loss of productivity from infections.