AV-Test Releases First Windows 8 Anti-Virus Comparisons

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Running third party anti-virus software on Windows 8? You will be interested in the results of the first independent comparison test of anti-virus solutions specifically designed to work on Windows 8. AV-Test tested 26 of the top brands on their performance for certification.

In this case, Microsoft's own Windows Defender 4.0 is considered to be the baseline for the test. It managed to get certified by AV-Test with a score of 11.5
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Yay for meaningless bar graphs with arbitrary assignment of numeric values! I can't wait until my AV software scores 6BN5.2A9 on the German firm AV-Test's test.
 
So Defender ties for the lowest protection score, but still gets certified because it has a high "usability"? Seems like a pointless test is protection isn't the main deciding factor.
 
The article clearly stated that windows defender was the baseline for the test. So whatever protection it offered was going to be included because...well, it was the baseline. :)
 
Koolthulu said:
So Defender ties for the lowest protection score, but still gets certified because it has a high "usability"? Seems like a pointless test is protection isn't the main deciding factor.
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Usability is not the options menu. Their definition of usability is for mistakes the software makes.
 
If you click one of the reviews you can see what the criteria are: http://www.av-test.org/no_cache/en/tests/test-reports/?tx_avtestreports_pi1[report_no]=130597

Defender gets 2 stars for this:
PROTECTION
Protection against malware infections
(such as viruses, worms or Trojan horses)
Protection against 0-day malware attacks, inclusive of web and e-mail threats (Real-World Testing) Industry average: 95% Samples used: 125
81%

Detection of widespread and prevalent malware discovered in the last 4 weeks (the AV-TEST reference set) Industry average: 99% Samples used: 18,267
99%

Same as pretty much all other reviews that have heavy weighting on 0 day malware. It's a balance between false positives for new threat detection and I'm fine with how Defender handles it since I'm not at risk of being infected by clicking infected wolverinen00dsbritneysp3ar5.gif.exe.vbs type files.
 
Not surprised about Bitdefender being the best. Bitdefender has had the number 1 rating going back 3 or 4 years now. I've been using this for the last few years and it's so good, it's actually a pain in the ass sometimes. One, if you have an older game and you've lost the serial like I have a few times and you need a crack, Bitdefender will give you one hell of a time with it. It absolutely can not be turned off. The only way to disable Bitdefender is in safe mode and changing a few registry entries. I have used it lately tho, I feel like my PC is locked down.
 
I must be blind, but where can you find the overall rating? Everything is sorted in alphabetical order and there is no obvious "score" composite...
 
and how likely are we to see the end of "preview" for incoming email across the board? How about email viewed as "HTML"?
 
I don't know why MS doesn't start loading up EMET with Windows 8.

I run all my Windows 8 boxes with the MS Defender and EMET3.0 install on max for the Zero Day stuff.

No problems so far.

Thing is though you can have the best AV out there but as the ransomware/hijack stuff gets written and released hourly if you are gonna get hit it's going to happen. AV or no AV.

It's like getting a cracked windscreen, you can go years without one and then two in as many weeks.

Just one of those things.

I've seen pretty much all of those AV packages beaten in my time. Some more then others....
 
I usually read AV comparatives, and it's amazing comparing the results between the two. On AV comparatives, Avira curb-stomps AVG among free AV software. But on AV test, the results are clearly reversed.

It seems that AV comparatives gives more weighting to protections over the UI, although AVC does do comparisons between usability and the effects on system performance. Also, AVC gives hard numbers on those effects rather than just a bar.
 
Koolthulu said:
So Defender ties for the lowest protection score, but still gets certified because it has a high "usability"? Seems like a pointless test is protection isn't the main deciding factor.
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MSE has not been certified by them for over a year. The only reason Defender/MSE was certified on 8 was because of the performance score/usability score, which is due to it being integrated into the OS. MSE has gone downhill in protection over the past year and has been ranked poorly accordingly to that.
 
bigdogchris said:
MSE has not been certified by them for over a year. The only reason Defender/MSE was certified on 8 was because of the performance score/usability score, which is due to it being integrated into the OS. MSE has gone downhill in protection over the past year and has been ranked poorly accordingly to that.
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....and yet, I'm supposed to "trust" Microsoft in their updates to keep me "secure"

What good is "performance" if all the bad stuff gets through it? Seems like a contradiction is terms to me.

or is there something I'm missing here?
 
bigdogchris said:
MSE has gone downhill in protection over the past year and has been ranked poorly accordingly to that.
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If you look at the review or the score from it I pasted a few posts up, it does fine on "Detection of widespread and prevalent malware discovered in the last 4 weeks" (99% detected, virtually the same as the competition). It gets ranked down for 0 day threats, which it lags the average (81% vs 95%) by a significantly wide margin.

So a test which comprises of 0.7% (0.0068) of threats in the Protection detection suite (125 zero day and 18,267 widespread/prevalent), the difference between a 2 star score (Defender) and a 5.5 (out of 6) star score essentially boils down to missing around 20* zero day threats. That doesn't seem too reasonable. I don't see that as a problem with Defender, just a stupid weighting which gives Defender a pretty meaningless low score.

Certainly, if you're a walking hot zone (compulsive warez monkey / careless consumer of random binaries) or are in an industry where you would be targeted by zero day threats (gov't, defense, financial and other large businesses), you'd certainly want to make zero day detection absolutely critical and would probably not use Defender, or at least not as sole protection.

*(95% of 125 is 119, 81% of 125 is 101, a difference of 18)
 
Oh and if you want to set it up quick, set the max settings option and then to set the applications import the protection profile from the Program Files(x86)\EMET\Deployment\Protection Profiles folder.

You want the All profile as that adds in the most common software and adjusts accordingly.
 
The score for Bitdefender looks about right. I've been using it off and on for about 9 years. I quit using it for two years when their 2009 edition started detecting all 64-bit programs as false positives. I had to rebuild my main machine three times because of it and quit using it. I went back to it in 2011. It was a major goof on their part, but they finally fixed it. They had a problems with false positives for a while there, including calling a World of Warcraft patch a trojan, but the false positive rate dropped tremendously in 2011. Now they're back to being among the best in the business.
 
/usr/home said:
Queue troll comments from DeathPrincess...
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I'm posting so that she can comment yet AGAIN on my RocketFish PSU, you know, because she's got nothing else. :p

As for Microsoft Defender, I would rather use it than nearly all of those AV programs listed save for ESET.
 
Looks like Bit Defender ranked pretty high. Makes that hot deal a while back even hotter. I think I still have about 18 of the licenses left
 
Red Falcon said:
I'm posting so that she can comment yet AGAIN on my RocketFish PSU, you know, because she's got nothing else. :p

As for Microsoft Defender, I would rather use it than nearly all of those AV programs listed save for ESET.
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Your little Rocket is okay. *headpats* It has more fish than rocket, but no one's perfect.
 
Vipre rarely seems to be included in these tests. I've been using it since the 10 machine for 3 years for $39 deal came around about 2 years ago, and it's worked perfectly for me.
 
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