AV-Comparatives List Top Antimalware Software

AV-Comparatives is an Austrian based Non-Profit-Organization, which provides independent Anti-Virus software tests free to the public. During the course of the year the company has tested 16 of the most commonly used Anti-Virus/Anti-Malware programs out there.

The following products are tested in the current main comparatives:

avast! Professional Edition 4.8 AVG Anti-Virus 8.5 AVIRA AntiVir Premium 9 BitDefender Antivirus 2010 eScan Anti-Virus 10 ESET NOD32 Anti-Virus 4.0 F-Secure Anti-Virus 2010 G DATA AntiVirus 2010

Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2010 Kingsoft Antivirus 2009 McAfee VirusScan Plus 2009 Microsoft Live OneCare 2.5 Norman Antivirus & Anti-Spyware 7.10 Sophos Anti-Virus 7.6 Symantec Norton Anti-Virus 2010 TrustPort Antivirus 2009

During the most recent test the AV-Comparatives used two sets of malware: Set A, which contains malware signatures found from December 2007 to December 2008 (of which most products could detect over 97 percent), and Set B, which contains malware from the last seven months (1.6 million samples). The set included the following categories of malware: Trojans (69.5 percent), Backdoors/Bots (20.7 percent), Worms (6.1 percent), other malware (1.5 percent), and Windows viruses (0.4 percent).

This test focused on how well each piece of software detected the malware proactively, without it being executed, using complex generic signatures, behavior analysis, heuristics, and so on. The basic idea is to see how well new malware can be caught without having to be updated or having to download new signatures.

In the basic summary results Avira won out hands down, however the software listed 21 false positives, dropping its overall ranking.

1. AVIRA AntiVir Premium 9.0.0.446: 74 percent
2. G DATA Antivirus 20.0.4.9: 66 percent
3. Kaspersky AntiVirus 9.0.0.463: 64 percent
4. ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4.0.437.0: 60 percent
5. F-Secure Antivirus 10.00.246: 56 percent
6. Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0 beta: 56 percent
7. Avast Professional Edition 4.8.1348: 53 percent
8. BitDefender Antivirus 13.0.13.254: 53 percent
9. eScan AntiVirus 10.0.997.491: 53 percent
10. AVG Antivirus 8.5.406: 49 percent
11. Trustport Antivirus 2.8.0.3017: 49 percent
12. McAfee VirusScan Plus 13.11.102: 47 percent
13. Symantec Norton Antivirus 17.0.0.136: 36 percent
14. Sophos Antivirus 7.6.10: 34 percent
15. Norman Antivirus & AntiSpyware 7.10.02: 32 percent
16. Kingsoft Antivirus 2009.08.05.16: 32 percent

In the overall rankings AV-Comparatives gives the nod to G DATA, Kaspersky, ESET, F-Secure, Microsoft, Avast, BitDefender and eScan. All of which earned their 3 stars "advanced plus" ranking. AVIRA (based mainly on false pos), AVG and Symantec all earned 2 stars for an "advanced" rating. While standard (one star) rating went to McAfee, TrustPort, Sophos, Norman and Kingsoft.

It should be noted during the AV-Comparatives Malware removal tests from Oct 2009 none of the 16 software packaged tested actually tested "very good". eScan, Microsoft and Symantec were the only three to achieve "good" ranking at both removal of Malware and removal of leftovers (reg entires, executables ect).

For more details checkout AV-Comparatives.org.