av-test.org test results: security suites protection/performance last 6 months

http://www.av-test.org/en/news/news...-complete-an-endurance-test-lasting-6-months/

free and paid suites and also some free av's included: avast free, avg free, mse

good results for the usual performers bitdefender, kaspersky, avast free

not good results for checkpoint (za free) or avira

 

89% for Avira? Never heard of such a thing.

 

Yeah, that AVIRA score is indeed weird. On the other hand it's funny how avast! FREE is up with the max protection expensive internet security suites

 

Avira most likely got a low score due to lack of HIPS/proactive protection.

 

These guys with their "system load" qualifier. They always say Kaspersky is light on your system when we know it isn't. There must be more to 'heaviness' than RAM usage...

 

As with most security software, performance relies on a lot of factors including hardware and other software installed.

IME, the last few versions of Kaspersky have been as light as a feather on my systems.

 

No HIPS testing here. That's matousec your referring to where Avira fails miserably as do many other security suites. Hands down Avira still has one of the best scanning engines out of the major players. Set the heuristics on high and then see what the results look like. I used to use Avira at max settings and had virtually no false positives.

 

My understanding is that they test all of the products' features, not just scanning, like VirusBulletin. Hence, Avira does a great job at detecting most of the stuff, but cannot compete with software like BD, F-Secure, Kaspersky etc. that have proactive protection features as well.

 

Avira Free has proactive protection, no? Avira Free is on par with the top leading brands in terms of detection....it's the HIPS that fail....taken from matousec

This is why a layered approach is best.

 

This. Kaspersky always on top of performance charts, yet whenever i tried it it felt so horribly sluggish. A lot better these days than it did in the past but still really heavy. Same goes for MSE. Always "light" in all the tests but when i tested it on my high performance rig, it was causing horrible slowdowns and overal sluggishness. Especially when dealing with game installers packed ina single EXE (of lets say 2GB size). I never got that with avast!, AVG or AVIRA, yet these never score as good as the above two. Which makes no sense at all.

 

There is some improvement for avast since last year,it even outperformed Qihoo this time

 

That's what I'm saying. Avira has good signature and heuristic detection, but poor HIPS/proactive protection, which is why it doesn't score as high in real world tests.

 

does anyone see whether the machines being tested on were x64, x86 or some combo of both?

 

I've used KIS for almost a year now. Initially it was a little sluggish, especially opening MS programs or when I had the web protection enabled. Otherwise it ran pretty light for me. After running a few weeks the MS programs were starting to open faster and I sometimes have to disable the web protection or my computer churns away trying to make it across the web. Otherwise it's pretty light. I have any unknown program to be treated as untrusted so maybe that helps some?

 

No FortiClient tested... it's missing a major player here.

 

Kav is ok, a little heavy but not too bad. I have a license for Pure 3.0, but I still miss KAV 4. That was a great AV. They used to be apart from the crowd, but now it looks and acts like all the others. Currently using BD TP and it's playing nice.

Paul

 

here is the info I received from av-test.org:

looks kind of like a hodgepodge ..wish they would have kept the tests on the same machines

 

Good results for the top players as always. Kaspersky and Bitdefender!

 

I'm confused by this discussion of Avira's detection rate being caused by it's not having hips, pointing to matousec's test as proof of that yet Bit Defender scored worse than Avira on matousec's test.

 

Again ..... Matousec's test are leak tests. Most Internet Security suites use by default a trust concept either signature and/or user community to determine if an app outbound connection is OK. Also most of these have some type of behavior blocking protection. The only time your going to get an outbound alerts from IS's in this caregory is when the behavior blocker determines an unknown/unsigned app is attempting an outbound connection.

When a HIPS is part of the IS, most configure or recommend you configure the browser and any other Internet facing apps to untrusted. As such, your going to get an alert when anything outbound attempts a connection.

Note that almost all Internet suites have an option where you can be prompted for all Internet connections. It is turned off by default. Matousec tests with the default settings set on.

 

Hi itman Thank you again for trying to educate me on this subject. but that's not what I was confused about. I was confused by someone's explaining Avira's non-stellar detection percentage on the fact that it has no HIPS component who then pointed to matousec's test as evidence of this. What confused me was that the topped rank Bit Defender scored even lower than Avira on Matousec's test so how could the results of matousec's test be used to explain it's relatively low detectection score.

 

AV-Comparatives - Heuristic/Behaviour Test March 2013
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=352255

 

As you can see from the test, Avira has fallen behind because of it's poor behavioral detection skills (through its heuristic detection is probably among the best).

 

As I can see in Heuristic/Behaviour Test (awards list), Avira ranked 7th out of 21.
It's not so "fallen behind" imho.

 

Avira used to rank in the top 2-3 just a few years ago, as it still does in on-demand scanning tests, when behavior blocking was not as widespread as it is today. Now it gets not-so-impressive scores in AV-C's heuristic and real world tests, as well as pretty disappointing scores in AV-Test tests.