How to test Antivirus Software?

Does anyone have pretty much a checklist of how they test the performance and effectiveness of Antivirus software?

I'm currently evaluating NOD32 and Kaspersky in a corporate environment and am trying to come up with some measure of performance that is a bit better than "gut feel".

Suffice to say it's much harder to find spyware/viruses when you actually need them!

 

You don't need malicious files to test antiviruses. Av-comparatives and Av-test are doing that better than you. But if you need to test if antivirus is working you can try eicar test file : www.eicar.org .

And for the performance I have a method; I have a downloads folder with full exe and archive files. Some files is big ( like 800mb) and some are very small( like 50kb). I click that folder in windows explorer and count the time when icons loading. When all icons loaded i stop the count.

 

First of all you need to straighten out what is important to you.
detection? cleaning? cpu usage? compatability?

Than just work with it for a while. Not just one day but a couple of weeks. And see what it can do for you. ~snip~

 

What would be recommended to prevent a test of brand 'B' from being contaminated by leftovers from your test of brand 'A'?

 

Try using an image using an image making program like Acronis True Image. Keep the "clean" image on an external drive or different partition (I would encrypt that one to ensure no changes were made.) That is what I do when I test any kind of software, malware, system change.

SourMilk out