Who Are The TOP AV Apps And Why?

Who are the top av apps on the market today, and why, what actual data can you share to prove your point?

And what AV apps would you steer clear from and why, what data also supports your ideas?

Please share real data and facts, not just some general rant as to your likes and dislikes...

Let this post be a starting point for all users to find some real resourceful information to help them.

 

I am 99% sure of the outcome of this thread: worse, good, better and best, but mainly subjective personal opinions and finally (or earlier) this thread will be closed by the Forum Management.
You better have a look at the several Testers Forums, where you can find facts and figures and interpretation of them.

But maybe I am wrong.

Gerard

 

I will give it a shot. My own way of looking at this is like car shopping. I check out several dealers and models before narrowing it down, taking it for a test ride and finally making a purchase.

Now applying this logic to a AV. IMO I look all of the so called testing labs, reviews, posts here and look for a common theme of top performers. Which consistently rank high, overall. I then narrow my choices down and then run each for a period to see which fits my needs and then I buy.

That to me is the only logical way to approach it. What did I choose overall? Doesnt matter, because the criteria I set forth with, may not be the same as you or anyone else here would use. Hope that helps. It is at least a honest post.

 

Personally I think it's more a matter of luck than anything else. If you happen to get hit by a zero-day from a legit site that has been hacked (you don't have to go to porno or warez sites anymore), more than likely none of the AV's are going to help you.

Last September Consumer Reports did a thingy on Malware/AV's. After seeing the results I was about to toss it in the garbage (kaspersky got a low detection rating) but instead emailed them to find out what's up.

Tuns out that in addition to "in the wild" stuff, they had NEW malware written just for them (apparently they have software/malware writers on retainer): basically stuff that no def will protect against. Kaspersky ended at 65/100 overall.

 

This is nothing more than a variant of a vs. thread. In the end even if someone is using what most would consider a subpar AV they will defend it since it's what is currently installed on their pc. If someone spends a few minutes searching this forum they can find out who the "top AV's" are. At that point they simply need to give them a trial run to see how the performance is on their pc.

 

Agree is the best one word answer to this!

 

By the way this post is not just for me, but others in general to have a local reference point to work from and gather information to help them also.

Sorry if anyone misunderstood the post. Let's please try and be positive here people, there is nothing complicated about this. There are many AV sites for gathering good information, I personally know of a few, and sorry I just didn't list some of them before.

Now can others please share some real world data?

AV-Comparatives lists side by side comparisons. I'm not sure if the other links have any similar tests...

AV-Comparatives

ICSA Certified Anti-Virus Products

Westcoastlabs

The Virus Bulletin

 

The effort that some vendors put into their products to pass "ITW tests" may not reflect the effort they put into detecting viruses outside of those included in the test sets. It's possible for an AV product to pass certain tests but still have mediocre or even poor malware detection. AV-Comparatives & AV-Test (typically the review house for PCMag) are probably the two most respected labs out there. You can review their in-depth comparatives and average the results to see who's hot and who's not. Again, please spend some time using the SEARCH feature that actually works (unlike AnandTech).

 

The problem with the question is the term "top" is somewhat vague. If you mean who has the best flat file scanning, prospective detection or lowest false positives there are lots of professionally done tests to consult. How about time from discovery to signature distribution or resistance to termination?

The most widely used (not free) AV's are well known also. Symantec is the largest by far. Together with McAfee and Trend that is over 80% of the US market.

You have to look harder for tests on AV system overhead and some of these tests produce contradictory results for the same product.

There are any number of bloggers out there that have their favorite, but I have not counted blog recommendations to see who has the most.

From the perspective of a corporate IT department best has a lot to do with remote management capabilities. Should we take all these attributes and assign points the way Car And Driver magazine does to pick a winner?

I know what I like, thats about it.

 

The best AV is ... ... lapse of memory. I apology.

Maybe it depends on the rest of your security software and of your er... assets.

Cheers

 

For data, I just meant sites out there like AV-Comparatives that are showing side by side results...

TOP applications, I just meant the best overall protection...

Certainly besides the sites I listed, there must be some other well respected AV sites that do side by side comparisons for protection?

THANKS

 

You can always keep track on forums like this.
av-comparatives one of the most reliable out there. please do not trust too much on other tests

 

http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/latest-test-results-from-andreas-marx.html

 

I forgot that one, thanx
This is the other trustworthy indeed

 

I think that the TOP avs are the ones that develop their own technology instead of bying engines and virus databases. I always have a lot of respect for this work knowing how difficult it is. These are, for example Kaspersky, Symantec, Doctor Web, Eset, F-prot, Mcafee, Norman, Avast, Avira, and Bitdefender.

 

and like Moon Secure AV ...

 

oh, we get to try now

of course i could be biased and say Drweb is the best, i would be wrong.

drweb does have many qualities, and reasons why it is still my personal #1.

i would say, that overall including factors such as detection,heuristics,updates,support,price and the actual program itself, stabilty, GUI, options etc... there is only 1 overall best in my opinion.

Kaspersky.

i believe drweb has everything to offer, but there is a debate at the moment between overall detection and detections that matter.


either way, for me.. the Russians know what they are doing.

 

Best overall protection, hmmmm. Its hard to know from the way AV's are tested. A scientific test would be to take a random group of users and see how many get infected after 3 or 6 months, which is a very expensive thing to do.

Another thing to remember is that any Av can be augmented with various other things like HIPS or behavior detection so pinning the entire thing on just the AV might not be the best approach.

Anyway, here is my list of the AV's that IMO provide top protection, and just because I left your favorite off anyone, it does not mean it is bad:

Symantec Endpoint Protection 11: A suite that includes a behavior detection module and Sygate firewall technology. Many of the technologies are purchased, but Symantec has deep pockets and buys what it wants. Designed for the corporate market, it has extensive remote management capabilities, verification of protection status before signing onto a network and a module that can prohibit the use of USB keys and the like.

Avira: Consistently high detection rates at different test labs both for flat file scanning and proactive detection. Has more false positives than average when heuristics are on high. The only free one of these four.

Nod32: Probably the best heuristics in the business with a low rate of false positives. The favorite of AV-Comparatives and Scott Finney, who I don't trust quite as much.

Kaspersky: Reacts the fastest to new threats, very high percentage of detection and now has a sandbox technology built in to test suspicious files that are not in the signature database. Some users report issues with chkdisk due to the extended attributes this AV uses to increase scanning speed. In the KIS suite Matousec liked the firewall. Kaspersky sells its engine to many other vendors, with some using it in conjunction with a second engine. In general, I don't like multi engine solutions as they are a strain on system resources.

 

Could it be that Symantec and McAfee are possibly the most used is because computer manufacturers plant them in the pc's they sell?

 

Mcafee for me, although it has got a modest detection rate, even the most basic version, virusscan offers virus, spyware protection, siteadviser, quickclean, defragementer, network view, firewall. This is very good, and normal companies generelly tend not to offer this much in their base product.

 

There is no number one AV . Just trial a couple, and find out witch one runs best, because the so call best (by experts) good run like on your system..