Dennis Technology Labs ~ January - March 2013 tests.

http://www.dennistechnologylabs.com/reports/s/a-m/2013/.

 

Thanks!

 

Intersting appendix mentioning "This test was unsponsored"

 

MSE and AVG bombed this test.

Trend's performance is puzzeling given it's recent excellent scores in other AV test lab tests?

I am a bit leery of Dennis's rankings given it's prior associations with Symantec. Somewhat akin to NIS always getting PC Magazine's editors choice award - aka money talks.

Given Avast's high ranking, I have to assume most tests were of the Internet malware variety where Avast would excel given it's excellent web shield protection.

Bottom line - I don't consider Dennis Labs on par with the major test labs; AV-Test, VB, West Coast Labs, and to a lesser degree AV-Comparatives.

 

They just wanted to knock the future Wilder's argument out up front.

 

Look at the raw data and make your own rankings up.

AVG only had four more compromises than Norton and avast! and AVG had no false positives.

Trend Micro only had two more compromises than Norton and avast! but it did have much more false positives than anyone else. In Dennis Technology Labs last report, Trend Micro was the only product to have no compromises. They did have much more false positives, though. The many false positives is not unusual for Trend Micro.

You will not find a similar test with Norton having a different ranking often, even from non Dennis Technology Labs tests. Here is a Dennis Technology Labs test where Norton is not first. https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=2132328.

 

No Avira

 

suprised, Norton is 1st on Dennis test. Again

 

Norton is generally above both Kaspersky and Bitdefender in this daily run zero-day test: http://www.shadowserver.org/wiki/pmwiki.php/AV/VirusDailyStats

Avast also generally does well, although the last few days it has bee toward middle of top.

You can get average over different time periods on the left in middle to bottom.

What is weird is that Kaspersky is generally toward bottom. For example while Norton is 1st and Avast 3rd and Bitdefender 8th, with all three over 80%, over the last 60 days, Kaspersky is at bottom with only two other programs below it, with an under 32% blocking rate and its 90 day average is around 20%.

The testing sites makes this disclosure: There has been a lot of discussion on how well each vendor does in a 'zero-day' situation, and that our stats seem to be higher than the industry norm. To better understand why these statistics show what they do, we have to look back to the sources of the binaries. Since August of 2007, we have seen a very large increase of dropper style malware being propagated. The detection rate for these types of malware (mostly trojans), is not as good as the malware that they eventually download and install. Once a system has been infected and controlled, a more reliable and stable binary is loaded. These binaries are detected at a much higher percent than the other binaries that we see because they are in many case nothing new to the Anti-Virus vendors. This trend is more clearly seen by looking at our source table and because the majority of the binaries are coming from the sandboxing process means that we are receiving the greatest amount of malware from the malware samples themselves. These in turn are all fed back into the Anti-Virus testing systems and reset to the sandbox systems.

If and when this trend changes again, the charts will reflect those new directions the malware authors are taking the infection vectors.

Anyone know if Kaspersky would have trouble in that type of situation?

 

No wonder Norton scores well, is Dennis Labs an affiliate of sorts ?

Unsponsored ? Perhaps that's a matter of how you define things.

If you look at the test setup:

Protection rates:

'Neutralize' is a bit vague.
What constitutes a running threat ? A malicious script that is terminated/blocked as soon as it starts, or some malware that is already active on the computer (e.g. running trojan) ?

'Defense' is more objective. The way Norton checks the reputation of a file before it is downloaded, combined with its vast user base gives Norton a very strong advantage.

These days, who runs WIN XP SP3 with IE7 without ANY updates ??
To add insult to injury, Adobe Flash and Adobe's Reader were introduced (undoubtedly very vulnerable versions) and worse, Java. Most users don't need Java, and I'm willing to bet that the Java version was highly vulnerable.

I have my doubt about the 'threat selection' method, to put it mildly.

What's this about 'partner vendors' and who are they (unspecified, Norton/Symantec) ? Unspecified.

So, for what this test is worth ...

 

Wouldn't it actually be fair to try to simulate a real-world test setup, with such popular programs, purposely not fully updated but to an average-user patch level (like what a company as Secunia reports).
Not defending this test or results but a real-world test with Win7, IE10 and everything patched and up-to-date isn't real-world either imo.

Edit. This test mainly shows spending money on NIS or KIS and not choose free Avast only offers a marginal difference.

 

What is the 'average' user patch level. Most average users dont even know what a 'patch' is. I am not kidding.

I'd rather spend the minimal cost on NIS or KIS or any product that provides protection over and above the free product rather than depending on the best-effort, you-get-what-you-pay-for, don't-expect-too-much-since-you- aren't-paying-or-it, free products like Avast.

 

Slander of sorts ? Stop making a fool of yourself.

 

Yeah, just like it wasn't #1 on another Dennis test.. See https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=2132328

Whats your point ?

 

True, and for my own purposes I would rather see something newer tested. I do have large customers that still use XP with IE7. I have no idea about how current the patches are. I see people every day that have Java installed that is WAY out of date. It would be no surprise to me that the setup tested would represent the average user that is not computer literate, and therefore more in need of a good AV than someone that is up to date with a modern OS that is fully patched.

 

It was only recently that according to Microsoft that Win7 finally overtook WinXP in terms of marketshare. That was a few months ago. From that 50% share threshold, its obviously declined even further, so you can take a guess, 30% 40% users use XP ? How many people run Windows ? A LOT

I would like a Win7 test too and hopefully DTL switches soon.

 

The false positive reports seem off to me: From personal experience; some of the products with least FPs in this test have caused me more real world trouble than the rest....My own experience is very consistent with AV-comparatives for the most part.

As for the rest; I wish they'd tested the paid AVG as well; I think it may have done a bit better. Other than this; I don't have much to say, it's a test of real-world protection and though the protection results seem fine, I feel the FP results are off.

BTW: If AVG was tested with default settings; AVG by default does not detect and block very old exploits that are likely to be fixed in the present day through updates on a reasonable computer ("enable thorough scanning" fixes this "problem"). This could have factored into their testing....

 

Decent showing by Eset.

 

I was expecting more programs to be tested.

 

Excellent! thanks for the link.

 

Guys, we do some media consultancy work for Dennis Publishing, and I can assure you money doesn't influence the results of these tests. Technology magazines are fiercely independent here in the UK and proudly so.

Dennis is primarily a magazine company (www.dennis.co.uk). They produce the widely respected PC Pro. A couple of of issues ago PC Pro had their major yearly security roundup - which will have been arranged by their Technology Labs - and Norton didn't come out on top. Bitdefender and Kaspersky were the winners, with AVG and MSE in the bottom two.

Just because an AV test is sponsored, it doesn't mean the sponsor is falsely positioned at the top. I can assure you that the money for any roundup sponsorship pales in comparison to the yearly company revenue: ie. no technology publisher will potentially damage their credibility by accepting a few thousand pounds to skew results (results which can easily be viewed as skewed by most advanced users).

 

For sure no one is so stupid to make such things.

They are clever enough to use other ways ie. "adjusted" testing procedures, "adjusted" malware samples etc......

 

Please stop insulting ppl's intelligence.

"Just because an AV test is sponsored, it doesn't mean the sponsor is falsely positioned at the top. I can assure you that the money for any roundup sponsorship pales in comparison to the yearly company revenue"

This is totally bs. You think we are all stupid here?
For your first statement in bold above, if it is true, then the sponsor must be stupid enough to do so.
For your second statement, where is your source/numbers for your statement? Word is cheap and unreliable. Even if it's true, the sponsorship has nothing to do with the company's revenue.

There is no free lunch in this world, remember.

 

Actions speak louder than words.

I'm not going to research past posts about Dennis Labs, but I recall some association with Norton/Symantec.

If a vendor orders a test, can we rely on the full objectivity and truthfullness of the test ?
Perhaps in case of a few organizations like av-comparatives.
In general, we can't. Of course, if we can't it does not necessarily follow that the test is biased or incorrect !

'follow the money' is often useful, though not always.