Battle Avast vs Norton

[Scirious]

Hi people!

Well, nowadays Norton is the mother of them all, but it seems Avast is outperforming the mother. Is it true?

Between the premium paid versions of the two who has been showing better protection currently?

Thanks a lot,
- Scirious.

 

[simmerskool]

I have Norton AV Plus, $19 1st year, running on win10 VM. I like it, so far, but would not say Norton is my favorite. Two days ago I tried to install Avast One (free) on another VM after @Shadowra posted a review video, but it balked and would not install? I didn't care enough to look into it any deeper.

 

[Templarware]

Norton - Avast - AVG.

 

[partha_roy]

I find AVG better; the interface is quite sleek and the most intuitive of the three in my view, and the protection is just brilliant especially with the hardened mode and behavior blocker enabled

 

[Scirious]

View attachment 275415

Norton - Avast - AVG.

I don't get your post. I asked just because Avast has been performing better than Norton lately. So, in the image, Avast should be the bigger fish in terms of performance.

 

[Templarware]

I don't get your post. I asked just because Avast has been performing better than Norton lately. So, in the image, Avast should be the bigger fish in terms of performance.

Maybe you don't know that Avast bought AVG. then Norton bough Avast. That's what the fish "food chain" means.

 

[Scirious]

Maybe you don't know that Avast bought AVG. then Norton bough Avast.

But my post is not about who bought who. It's about who is performing better at protection.

 

[Templarware]

But my post is not about who bought who. It's about who is performing better at protection.

I know.
Avast was always better than Norton, Norton is paid bloat. Let's see how the acquisition will affect Avast it in the future.

 

[a090]

This is the perfect question for my brother @Trident. He’s a Norton guru (and by extension knows a lot about the Gen Digital umbrella of AV companies). I’m sure he’ll have some insight on both Avast and Norton’s engines, pros and cons of each in comparison to the other, etc. I don’t think the answer is as simple as Norton > Avast or Avast > Norton.

There is nuance here, and with Avast joining the NortonLifeLock family, it would be good to plan for a time when Avast tech gets rolled into Norton. They have some lucrative patents that NortonLifeLock will want their hands on. Might happen, eventually. Trident will know more on this, for sure.

 

[Trident]

Avast and Norton are fundamentally very different products. Avast offers better protection at times, Norton offers additional tools which may be beneficial and may stop certain attacks Avast won’t, specially with the IPS components.

Majority of tech in Norton is enterprise-grade and deployed by businesses. The Norton engine is mainly static analysis (more like NGAV) and majority of detections are generated via machine learning, whilst Avast is a bit more old-fashioned and Eset-like. An automated system must obtain the malware, create and distribute signature.

End of the day, they both provide protection good enough for home users.

Symantec seems to have recently changed their detection policy what gets added to definitions and heuristics. Similarly to Avira, they have recently added detections for phishing in documents and pages. Seems like some changes further to the acquisitions are coming.

 

[Scirious]

You are asking people about their opinion who’s better but when they express the opinion you’ve asked for, you reply in a manner which seems a bit rude. Why are you asking in the first place?
See below:

I'm sorry if you feel I was rude, but I was not. I just didn't understand his reply since I was asking about protection performance and his reply seemed to be about financial status of the company, which had nothing to do with my question. Thus, I expected him to explain it. But I assure you I was very polite. It is just a case of reading it peacefully. And I ask just because I'm curious which one of the two is better at protection at the moment, since we could suppose Norton could have all the intel an technologies of them all, but it still seems Avast performs better.

 

[Trident]

but it still seems Avast performs better

Yeah, you mean the recent tests from AV-Comparatives. Like all other tests ever made, these tests are conducted using a rather small scope of malware and performance in real-world situations might differ. That’s not to say test results are invalid.

At the moment Norton has not integrated anything from Avira (to be honest there is nothing worth integrating and Vincent already said they acquired them *just* to warm up with the freemium model).
Avast has a lot of useful patents and tech (this year they received few as well). Combining tech will take at least 2 more years to research and integrate. These are extremely different platforms and Gen/Norton/Symantec have a certain standard of doing everything which is slightly higher and more professional than Avast’.
There are many options and combinations possible.

At the moment Gen works on combining the synergies to maximise revenue.

 

[ForgottenSeer 97327]

Majority of tech in Norton is enterprise-grade and deployed by businesses. The Norton engine is mainly static analysis (more like NGAV) and majority of detections are generated via machine learning, whilst Avast is a bit more old-fashioned and Eset-like. An automated system must obtain the malware, create and distribute signature.

I thought that Avast CyberCapture is also based on Machine Learning / Artficial Intelligence.

Edit it is I found the blog over (Cyber Capture ) The AI part of of CyberCapture is called SimZilla, which typical performs ML/AI projections: in layman terms after having analysed malware the distance to known good data clusters and known bad data clusters is calculated.

our team has implemented a new system called Simzilla, which takes a different approach to binary similarity with custom similarity vectors. Put simply, Simzilla gives us ways to calculate the distance to nearby files and determines whether they will be classified as clean or malicious.

So Avast uses ML/AI for over six years now (combined with static analysis. code sequences/snippets analysis, reputation analysis and behavioral analysis in a sandbox)

 

[Trident]

I thought that Avast CyberCapture is also based on Machine Learning / Artficial Intelligence. Edit it ism I found the blog (Cyber Capture ) The AI part of of CyberCapture is called SimZilla, which typical performs ML/AI projections:

It is and it’s not only that, Avast is very heavily invested in machine learning. Evo-Gen is way more than 6 years old. But the local engine is not ML-Based, it is a standard hexadecimal detections engine “from byte x to byte y look for z”. This is why I’m saying malware needs to be obtained and signature (created via Evo-Gen usually) must be distributed (through streaming update). Avast also offers above average advanced attacks and scripts protection, for example IDP.Helu.25 blocks all PowerShell commands that have been encoded.

CyberCapture sounds amazing on paper but is not resistant to evasive threats and frequently slaps safe verdicts on malware. Sometimes (almost always) behavioural blocking would reverse that. It also works only for executables with MOTW.

Norton SDS is a static analysis engine (you can google it).