AV-C Dynamic Test Trends: May 2012-13

Hello. This is NOT an official AV-C chart, just something I threw together based on the real-world detection rates from AV-C.

I was interested in seeing how the different AVs have fared over time, rather than how they do on a single month.

Some notes:

- I apologize as having all these AVs on a single chart would make it impossible to tell which like is which, so I split it into 4 charts.
- I also apologize for only doing some AVs; I didn't want to to it for all, so I just did the most significant ones, as many excluded used Bitdefender as an engine.
- To account for user-dependence, I counted each % of user-dependence as .5% blocked.[/B]
- I could not account for when a version change was made, so I can't tell the correlation between detection and a new version.
- While not included, Fortinet is doing much better this year, several percentage points higher than in 2012.
- I have too much time on my hands

The trends seem to be:

Avast! - Steadily improving
AVG - Decreased but improving
Avira - Fluctuating and declining
Bitdefender - High and stable
ESET - Declined sharply but vastly improving
Kaspersky - High and slightly improving
McAfee - Was low, vastly improved, now slightly declining
Panda - Declined sharply, improved, now slightly declining
Qihoo - High and slightly declining
Trend Micro - Increased sharply, now high and stable
Vipre - Declined sharply, improved sharply, declined again, now improving

What I learned:

- I was surprised how they don't tend to score similar to each other each month; the tend to do their own thing.
- Impressed at how much McAfee has improved, which seemed to be the consensus here.
- Bitdefender has not gone below 99% in at least a year!

 

Interesting! Thanks very much for taking time doing these charts!

 

good chart

 

@ Brandonn2010... Truely well done sir!

As one chart-ist to another, very good work indeed.

-cheers,
feandur

 

In a nut shell:

The big 3, for the immediate future, now seem to be Kaspersky, BitDefender [=Emsisoft], and Trend Micro.

For a free AV Avast continues to look promising if it keeps up the performance.

-cheers,
feandur

 

Bitdefender and Emsisoft is not equal

 

like that trend shows good each month now but i still would not use it far to heavy and slow imo. if i did not care at all about performance and any decent amount of options in the program right now it looks to be the one to beat. i hate that there are basically no options though. i will not use kaspersky anymore due to issues with the company as a former reseller. bitdefender is okay imo good detection only okay program without a true custom installer i hate all the "extras" installed without my permission. leaves me out of those three i guess lol.

 

From what I can determine and I may be wrong but I do not believe AV Comparatives factors false positives in this test. This very well might explain Trend Micro and Avast's recent marked increase in test scores. Both these products have historically had high FP counts. Would be nice if AV-C would provide this info as a supplemental chart if indeed they are even testing for FPs. Any vendor can "crank up" the sensitivity on their scanners if FPs are not a consideration.

 

Afaik they do test for false positives, not just downloaded files but wrongly blocked urls also.
The FP results are combined with the detection scores into their 1-3 star award system but only in the 'real-world' test summary reports (like Aug-Nov 2013 PDF link) you can find the FP results.
They also perform other FP tests, last one in Sept 2012. but those are separate from the real-world test results.
Seems more useful to combine the two; drop the standalone FP tests and integrate them into the 'real-world' test; monthly detection and FP test results instead of a summary.

 

Nice