PC World Review of Nod32

You speak the truth.

 

Please explain why?

My argument:

- All AVs have failed to catch 0-day exploits, some of them implementable as part of web page views. It is very difficult to protect against those type of attacks (unless one has HIPS+Sandbox+ultra-harderning+very limited user accounts, something which is really not an average user manageable process, unlike multi-engine AV is).

If you can get the best of heuristics and the best of signature updates (by the use of two different engines) and do this with the price of 1 software (both as in money and in system slow down), then why not take it?

Exactly my point! Not switch (XOR), but add (AND).

Besides, ALL av, including KAV/NOD fail to catch exploits.

Completely agree: NOD32 is great (but not sufficient for a high risk user, imho). And no point in jumping ship (i.e. changing to another, but no harm in ADDITIONAL free security, which doesn't bog the system down or is very difficult to use/manager like most HIPS/sandbox solutions are).

I do not understand what is so difficult to understand about that.

But of course, anybody should implement the kind of security (both products and policy) that fits their situation.

My recommendation for a non-expert user who doesn't want to complicate his life (and spend his time) on HIPS/sandbox/whitelisting, is that a multi-av engine solution does improve the situation, esp. when combined with on-line free file scanner tools.

NOD32 for me is part of this portfolio, but it could just as well be BD+AntiVir+Kaspersky (if such a combo was somehow easy to install/manage).

 

This just isn't true about Kaspersky's and Norton's latest versions, my friend. Those remarks are from the past and should not be used anymore.

 

bitdfender 10 shouldnt slow your pc down eiether.
lodore

 

Depends upon the system. Even with a high spec machine here, I have found it relatively heavy in real-time.

 

Well...what you say may very well be true. But I thiink the concern with NOD32 right now is stemming from 2 test results and the recent beta suite. If I am not mistaken, NOD's performance fell in the latest AV Comparatives from Advanced + to Advanced. Couple that with the PC Mag review and the fact that the beta of the suite has had some issues...I think all that together is shaking people's confidence in NOD32 just a tad.

Mind you, I think most people realize that NOD32 is still an excellent AV. I just happen to think that there is a perception that it is starting to slide just a tad from the elite status is has maintained for so long.

 

Haven't used Norton but I absolutely agree with this when it comes to Kaspersky. I have tried NOD32 (the build previous to the latest) and for me KAV 6.0.321 was just as light.

 

I have used NOD, Kaspersky and now Norton. So that's why i made the remark

 

I don't know about Norton (I have this hangup about Symantec products), but KAV6 & KIS6 are 'top-flight'. I base that on the many machines at the office that have them and it's never been brought to my attention that either one is a resource-hog.

That said, I've never had a problem with NOD32 on my personal systems, so I'm not about to jump ship unless I do!

 

We should move forward.

 

So you expect an early beta version to have no problems?

 

I'm not really concerned (or alarmed!) by this review/test. Eset's history has shown that they're not slackers. Of all of the AV programs that I hold active licenses for (way too many, it's an issue that I'm working on ), I always seem to gravitate back to NOD32. I know it and trust it. These people are in it to stay, so I would fully expect Eset to "be on it".

 

where is Avira antivir in the pcworld's result?
now i am using it,and I think it is no worse than Kaspersky indeed.

 

And both have considerably high FP rates compared to Norton. You can't trust an AV product no matter how proactive their signatures are or how good their heuristics are if they have too many FPs. Its unacceptable that both have so many FPs even though their customer base is so much smaller compared to Norton.

There is a very disturbing trend that beginning to emerge: Every AV vendor is monitoring the defs being released by its competitors, and when such is release it will scan its incoming file set with that competitors defs. If a file is flagged, they will immediately push out a def for that file without actually analyzing it all in the name of fast response time. This leads to a ripple effect. If the original AV vendor has a false positive, a lot of the others do as well except the really big names that can't afford to blindly release a new def without actual analysis. Mark my words, in the near future there is going to be a lot of focus on FPs by AV testers.

 

http://www.av-comparatives.org/

page 6

Whether 5 or 6 false positives out of that many samples is really a problem is another matter. Personally, I'm willing to accept some false positives, if that's price of good heuristics.

/jab

Note: "Considerably higher" is also open to interpretation. In the above, Symantec had zero false positives, making Kaspersky and NOD infinitely higher...

 

Yes.. stay tuned, lates results are not public yet, but look at any of the reports on av-comparatives.

Retrospective 2006/11
Symantec - none
Kaspersky - few
NOD32 - few


Retrospective 2006/5
Symantec - none
Kaspersky - few
NOD32 - few

 

Are you working for an AV vendor or testing website? Because the way you said about the latest test results of AV-Comparatives which are not public yet makes me think....

As for the comments regarding FPs, you seem to be correct. I remember reading something in Norman's forum where a guy complained about rising number of FPs in Norman and a Norman representative said that every AV is rising in terms of FPs and it could be deduced from the post that a trade off was being made to ensure higher detection rates...

 

Symantec has a good record about FP
But in 2006/5: Rank nr 11, 8 and 11. and in 2006/11 : Rank nr 9,10 and 8.

 

Why NOD32 provides better "real life" security for me.

Kaspersky has proven to be an excellent piece of software. However, people must remember that the tests were used with the maximum settings. For Kaspersky to feel usable (at least for me) I must put it on the recommended settings which won't scan every file. With NOD32, I have everything checked and everything is scanned and I still don't feel a slowdown. Since I am on Vista, I also have Windows Defender on access scanning, and it is still usable.

The only other faster scanners are Panda and AVG, while good, not as great as the top performers.

I think people like to see NOD32 fail because of its rabid fan community, which I never knew existed until recently.

 

Sometimes I think NOD32 V2.x is getting a bit long in the tooth, but its still good. Anyway, why wasn't Avira's AntiVir tested? It get's better results in AV-Comparatives than NOD32 / Norton AV 2007 and BD.

 

I'll repeat it again, Avira AntiVir was not tested because PC World and AV-test were too far along with the testing by the time AntiVir had a Vista compatible version. Due to Avira not releasing a Vista version on time, it was not included. PC World had every intention of including it though, and will probably include it in future tests.

 

I can live with few FP and don't expect a 100% score. Nothing is perfect and no AV will have the optimum benefit with respect to all expectations. False FP are a relevant issue but this should be seen in context - how often does this happen, how likely is a user being affected by this. At this stage I don't think either KS or Nod users have a reason to complain about this.

 

Someone said NOD32 can be used as an "on-demand" scanner. So I guess it doesn't have any active drivers when it's shut down? In which case it would be compatible with KAV?? How would this work... to download updated NOD32 signatures I'd have to exit KAV, open NOD32/download signatures, then exit NOD32, and then reopen KAV??

Thanks in advance!