Comparatives / Reviews
| Comparatives & Reviews |
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Our sorting and testing methodology and the FAQ's can be found here (PDF). [08/2008] <-- Please click on the submenus on the left to access the various test reports. Main Tests These are our main tests released every three months. They are usually split into "on demand" and "retrospective/proactive" detection rate tests. Malware detection rate is still one of the most important and reliable factors in determining the effectiveness of an anti-virus engine which works without asking for user interaction, decision or opinion. The February and August tests show the detection rates of products over an actual and full malware test set from the previous months. The May and November retrospective tests evaluate the same products against new and unknown malware to measure the proactive detection capabilities (e.g. through heuristics, generic signatures, etc.). Both tests also take into consideration the false positive rate.Qualified Candidates: At AV-Comparatives we limit the number of participants in our tests to about sixteen to twenty vendors and where possible we include only good and reliable products/vendors. Due to this, we have devised various requirements in order to take part, which also aids us identifying and filtering out rouge anti-virus vendors. Summary Reports: Annually we release a summary report that collates the results of the various tests (primarily from the main tests, but not only). We then give awards and comment on product abilities. Archive: Contains main tests from previous years. Performance Tests These tests evaluate the impact of anti-virus software on system performance. Dynamic Tests This section contains full product (suites) long-term dynamic test reports. These tests evaluate the suites "real world" capabilities with default settings (incl. on-execution protection features). It is our aim to do these tests rigorously, because of this, these tests are time and resource expensive, so only products chosen for the main tests will be included. Currently these tests are performed using man power but we are working on an automated system, which should increase further the amount of samples processed. The first public report should be released within the year. Removal / Cleaning Tests These tests evaluate the cleaning / malware removal capabilities of anti-virus products. For this test we use "in-the-field" samples from infected PC's of customers. PUA Tests (Potentially Unwanted Applications); Our main test currently does not contain adware, spyware, dialers, tools and rogue programs. Due to the rise of these applications we will within the year release a test that evaluates the detection rate for PUA's (we will include only Adware, Spyware and Rogue AV's from last months - maybe we will include also other categories if time permits). Corporate Reviews We often get asked about reviews of corporate/enterprise products, with special emphasises on product features which are important to administrators. This section contains these reviews. Single Product Reviews This section contains single product reviews and tests. Archive: contains reviews/tests from past years.
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