Testing of proactive antivirus protection II

Mon, 03/16/2009 - 09:22 — Sergey Ilyin

Serious efforts of the antivirus industry are focused on proactive methods of antivirus protection, which allow antivirus software to combat malicious programs that have undergone modifications and those that are still unknown. This development trend is the most promising on the market and almost every developer likes to emphasize just how good their proactive defense is.

It should be noted that proactive technologies encompass a wide range of concepts and approaches, and it is impossible to take all of them into account within a single test. In this test we will only compare the heuristic components of antivirus protection (heuristic + generic detection, i.e., extended signatures), without taking into account an analysis of system events (behavior blockers or HIPS).

The results of the test make it possible to conclude how effective a heuristic analyzer is and in which antivirus product this component works better.

As an addendum, a final measurement of the detection level for the collection of malware samples was performed on the updated antivirus software a week after the main test. As a result, the quality of detection for new viruses, as well as the effectiveness of the classical signature-based method of each antivirus program was ascertained in addition to their heuristics.

Key results of the testing (detection – false alarm)

Award	Products
Gold Proactive Protection Award Download GIF image (500х500px)	Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009 (61% - 0.01%) Eset Nod32 Anti-Virus 3.0 (61% - 0.02%) BitDefender Antivirus 2009 (60% - 0.04%)
Silver Proactive Protection Award Download GIF image (500х500px)	Avira AntiVir Premium 8.2 (71% - 0.13%) Dr.Web 5.0 (61% - 0.2%) AVG Anti-Virus 8.0 (58% - 0.02%) Avast! Professional Edition 4.8 (53% - 0.03%) Norton Anti-Virus 2009 (52% - 0%) VBA32 Antivirus 3.12 (45% - 0.07%) F-Secure Anti-Virus 2009 (44% - 0.03%)
Bronze Proactive Protection Award Download GIF image (500х500px)	Panda Antivirus 2009 (38% - 0.02%) Trend Micro Internet Security 2009 (37% - 0.04%) Agnitum Outpost Anti-Virus Pro 2009 (33% - 0.07%)
Failed	Sophos Anti-Virus 7.0 (61% - 2.24%)