Kartikey Sapra
There are four independent testing companies that you can look to for quality virus protection information. Unfortunately, they generally only test commercial software and you’ll rarely see a free product make their lists. The best that we can do is look at the test results of the commercial versions and then see how close the tested versions are to the free versions. It’s an incomplete method, but it tends to produce better results than blindly trusting the advice of sites that may not be qualified to recommend your antivirus product.


1. AV Comparatives
AV Comparatives is a non-profit Austrian company that does independent, vendor requested testing of antivirus products. To get their latest test results, go to their home page and click on “Comparatives”. Click on “Online Results” to get a chart comparing all the different virus protection products. For a more in-depth report, click on the “Report” link. There you can see how fast products scanned, how many false positives they got, and what percentage of viruses they caught at the default and maximum settings. Here you can find the latest comparision Results here.


2. AV Test
AV Test is a German company that specializes in the testing of antivirus products. On their main page, you can usually find something under the news section that links to their latest antivirus test results, such as the Sept 08 comparision.


3. VB100 Certification
Virus Bulletin has been a major source for virus and malware news since 1989. Their certification, the VB100 was first introduced in 1998 and requires that a program detect 100% of known malware with no false positives with both on-demand and on-access scanning at its default settings. You can’t get the details of how products fared without being a paid subscriber to their magazine, but with a free registration, you can access the pass or fail histories of any virus product that they have tested in the VB100. Unfortunately, this Yes/No answer provides little information beyond helping to support or refute the more detailed testing results from organizations like AV Comparatives or AV Test.


4. ICSA Certification
The International Computer Security Association (ICSA) is an independent testing and certification division of Verizon. Most of the time, free antivirus products will not get ICSA certification, but their commercial versions will, so this step is only a guideline to get an idea of how good a commercial product is. Like the VB100 result, this certification can only serve to support or refute more detailed testing results. Go to the ICSA homepage and click on “Antivirus”, and then select “Certified Products” from the dropdown box. You should end up at the Antivirus Certification List.
Labels: ,
2 Responses
  1. Unknown Says:

    May i know which Antivirus software should i recommend for pc security purposes??


  2. I hope u might have got a great knoledge of antivirus ,but if u still want that i should sugeest one then u should use Symantec endpoint protection or Avira


Post a Comment