Loading ...AV-Comparative, an Austrian non-profit organization, offers free testing of antivirus software to all the interested parties. The company tests security products and releases a final report at the end of the year. 2011 saw Kaspersky grabbing the title of Product of the Year.
AV-Comparatives tests different antivirus software in a number of ways and rates them according to their performance. The highest rating is Advanced+, followed by Advanced, and then Standard. During the test, all the security products go through a number of phases like scanning hundreds of malware samples and based on the number of malware they eliminate, they are rated accordingly.
This time around, researchers came up with a new way of testing security products – every product had to go through a removal test wherein threats from the last six months had been gathered.
To win the Product of the Year award, security products should have the following qualities:-
• The malware detection rate should be high.
• An antivirus should have the capability of keeping a system secure.
• An antivirus should not crash or hang.
• There should not be any malicious bugs.
• Virus scan should not take a long time.
Kaspersky was the only product that got advanced+ rating in all the tests. Hence, it won the Product of the Year title. 2010 winner F-secure missed out by just one point.
AV-Comparatives also gave Top Rated award to other security products that scored at least five Advanced+ ratings. These include AVIRA, Bitdefender, ESET, and F-Secure.
To see the full report of AV-Comparatives, click here.
