Corporate and consumer products rated against Windows Defender baseline.
Independent testing house
AV-Test.org
has released its first set of figures for solutions run on
Windows 8
, covering 26 consumer and nine corporate products. At the consumer level,
Microsoft
‘s
Windows Defender
, included as standard in
Windows 8
, is treated as a baseline measure which others are expected to surpass, but a couple of stragglers manage to perform less well than this minimal target. In the corporate selection,
Microsoft System Center Endpoint Protection
took the same role, and again not all third-party offerings were able to outperform
Microsoft
.
Products are rated on a range of criteria including speed, system resource use, and false positives as well as protection against a range of threats in realistic scenarios. Each of three areas is given a rating out of six for a potential total of 18 points, with 10 being considered the minimum to achieve certification. In previous tests points have also been awarded for repair and cleanup, but this part of the test has been moved out to a separate report, which is expected out later in the year.
The top performer in the consumer tests was
Bitdefender
, with 17 points, dropping the single point on speed measures. Close behind was
BullGuard
, using
Bitdefender
‘s detection engine, with 16.5.
Kaspersky Lab
also did very well with a score of 16. Other quality performers included
AVG
,
G Data
,
Symantec
‘s
Norton
,
Tencent
,
Trend Micro
and
Webroot
, all on 15.5, and
Avast
‘s free edition and China’s
Qihoo 360
both on 15. Close behind were
ESET
,
F-Secure
and
Panda
on 14.5, and
Check Point
‘s
Zone Alarm
on 14. Not so impressive were
Lavasoft
‘s
AdAware
and
GFI VIPRE
on 13, and products from
Avira
,
McAfee
and
PC Tools
on 12.5. Only just respectable on 12 was
MicroWorld
‘s
eScan
, with the baseline set by
Microsoft
‘s
Defender
at 11.5. Named and shamed as being worse than the free product built into
Windows 8
were offerings from
AhnLab
and
Comodo
, both on 10 points and only just making the grade for basic certification.
In the corporate set, the baseline was set a little higher at 12.5, but was comforatbly beaten by leading performers
Fortinet
and
Symantec
, both doing very well with a score of 16.5 points out of a possible 18. Also putting in good showings were
Webroot
on 15,
F-Secure
and
Sophos
on 14.5 and
Kaspersky
on 14.
McAfee
‘s
VirusScan Enterprise
didn’t do too badly at 13.5 points, a full point clear of
Microsoft
‘s baseline, but
Trend Micro
‘s
OfficeScan
was found wanting with a lowly 12 points, still enough for certification.
Testing was carried out during January and February; full details can be found at the AV-Test.org website
here
.
VB
‘s own in-house testing covered
Windows 8
late last year, with details available
here
; our next set of results, on
Windows XP
, are due out in the next few weeks and the deadline for the next comparative, on
Windows 8
‘s server sibling
Windows Server 2012
, has been announced for April 17th.
Posted on 4 April 2013 by
John Hawes
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