App Review Battle : ESET Internet Security 2019 vs NORTON Security 2019

[stefanos]

Content source

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oARZJ8yweTQ

ESET and Norton offer almost the same thing, dedicated especially to a more family-friendly public with software that is autonomous, simple and very light. During the test, the 2 antivirus behaves the same on the threats of the Web. Unfortunately on the pack, ESET fails because the malware Spark disrupts the machine to make it inaccessible or that Norton makes a machine clean. Winner: Norton

 

[Mahesh Sudula]

ESET and Norton offer almost the same thing, dedicated especially to a more family-friendly public with software that is autonomous, simple and very light. During the test, the 2 antivirus behaves the same on the threats of the Web. Unfortunately on the pack, ESET fails because the malware Spark disrupts the machine to make it inaccessible or that Norton makes a machine clean. Winner: Norton

However these same results reverse in Labs. The vendors who consistently maintain CLEAN SHEET gets dismal ratings.
Average vendors like Ahnlab, Bullguard, Mcafee, Eset gets sparking rating out of the BOX.

 

[RoboMan]

ESET has a cool futuristic robot.

ESET wins.

 

[beavisviruses]

ESET has a cool futuristic robot.

ESET wins.

but in the test Eset Suck and failed. Norton have better protection, is one of the best av in the market

 

[Andrew3000]

but in the test Eset Suck and failed. Norton have better protection, is one of the best av in the market

He was sarcastic.

 

[RaduGL]

Thanks for the review. Norton is looking strong these days.

 

[amico81]

if we take a look at various tests , then we can say that norton has a solid protection. It would be my favorite av....but the stupid registration bug
(no connection to the servers) and the high price...that scares me

 

[beavisviruses]

Thanks for the review. Norton is looking strong these days.

ESET FAILED in the test, computer cant start. In Norton system start normaly, winner norton

 

[Andrew3000]

if we take a look at various tests , then we can say that norton has a solid protection. It would be my favorite av....but the stupid registration bug
(no connection to the servers) and the high price...that scares me

You can resolve the bug by holding Norton open, eventually it connects itself. I did so when I tried it.

 

[RoboMan]

ESET ain't bad or sucks because of a single test performed with basic tweak settings. ESET is known for being kind of weak on default settings (in many scenarios). It's not an install-and-forget product. You need to invest a little time looking through it and taking out the best it can offer.

 

[Divine_Barakah]

Thanks for the review. Norton is looking strong these days.

It has always been so.

 

[Divine_Barakah]

ESET ain't bad or sucks because of a single test performed with basic tweak settings. ESET is known for being kind of weak on default settings (in many scenarios). It's not an install-and-forget product. You need to invest a little time looking through it and taking out the best it can offer.

Eset has to do something to avoid such catastrophic scenarios. What do they expect? All users are expert enough to tweak their product? No! This is not acceptable by any means: if you don't tweak the product then the system will be badly infected. How come for a security company let their customers' systems to be infected? Eset has to implement a kind of behavioural protection. Eset has the power and money to acquire other companies or even develop their own protection modules so why the wait?

 

[ForgottenSeer 72227]

ESET ain't bad or sucks because of a single test performed with basic tweak settings. ESET is known for being kind of weak on default settings (in many scenarios). It's not an install-and-forget product. You need to invest a little time looking through it and taking out the best it can offer.

Agreed, it missed a sample yes, but that doesn't make it a POS. As good as Norton is, it too can miss malware. Nothing is perfect and quite frankly we need to stop expecting perfection. No product is perfect and all products will miss things. That's why I always say, it doesn't matter how well a product scores on a test, all it takes is 1 piece of malware to get through and this applies to all products/vendors, it doesn't matter.

Eset has to do something to avoid such catastrophic scenarios. What do they expect? All users are expert enough to tweak their product? No! This is not acceptable by any means: if you don't tweak the product then the system will be badly infected. How come for a security company let their customers' systems to be infected? Eset has to implement a kind of behavioural protection. Eset has the power and money to acquire other companies or even develop their own protection modules so why the wait?

That's fair and all, but again no product is perfect.

It doesn't matter how many companies they buy, or how much money they put in to it, the fact remains that all products will miss malware and anyone can get infected using any product. This result just further proves this point. Eset could add a behavior blocker, but again, it doesn't catch everything and it too will miss things. Emsisoft for example has an excellent BB, but it too still misses things. Having a certain piece of technology doesn't make all your problems go away. Fact is, malware is still a cat and mouse game. AV vendors get an edge, hackers eventually find ways around them. Why else do we constantly read about companies/government getting hacked, with whatever security solution they have in place, sitting quietly not aware they are infected or a hacker is stealing data. Look at the Wanacry fiasco, that ransomware, spread so fast that it essentially flew by all security products that were out there.

At they end of the day, you cannot expect a product to catch everything. I do not know why people still act surprised when a product misses a piece of malware. This has been on going for years, with all vendors and unfortunately it will continue to always happen.

 

[Divine_Barakah]

Agreed, it missed a sample yes, but that doesn't make it a POS. As good as Norton is, it too can miss malware. Nothing is perfect and quite frankly we need to stop expecting perfection. No product is perfect and all products will miss things. That's why I always say, it doesn't matter how well a product scores on a test, all it takes is 1 piece of malware to get through and this applies to all products/vendors, it doesn't matter.



That's fair and all, but again no product is perfect.

It doesn't matter how many companies they buy, or how much money they put in to it, the fact remains that all products will miss malware and anyone can get infected using any product. This result just further proves this point. Eset could add a behavior blocker, but again, it doesn't catch everything and it too will miss things. Emsisoft for example has an excellent BB, but it too still misses things. Having a certain piece of technology doesn't make all your problems go away. Fact is, malware is still a cat and mouse game. AV vendors get an edge, hackers eventually find ways around them. Why else do we constantly read about companies/government getting hacked, with whatever security solution they have in place, sitting quietly not aware they are infected or a hacker is stealing data. Look at the Wanacry fiasco, that ransomware, spread so fast that it essentially flew by all security products that were out there.

At they end of the day, you cannot expect a product to catch everything. I do not know why people still act surprised when a product misses a piece of malware. This has been on going for years, with all vendors and unfortunately it will continue to always happen.

Nothing is perfect, indeed! But many people and I love Eset and we all believe this is not the best of Eset can deliver. There is a room for improvements. I did not say Eset is bad, but for sure there is a serious issue with Eset when it comes to zero-day malware (on default settings). Eset has a very huge user base, so their cloud will offer decent advantage to protection and if they implement any sort of behavioural protection then well Eset will become much more superior in protection (if I may say).

 

[ForgottenSeer 72227]

Nothing is perfect, indeed! But many people and I love Eset and we all believe this is not the best of Eset can deliver. There is a room for improvements. I did not say Eset is bad, but for sure there is a serious issue with Eset when it comes to zero-day malware (on default settings). Eset has a very huge user base, so their cloud will offer decent advantage to protection and if they implement any sort of behavioural protection then well Eset will become much more superior in protection (if I may say).

Oh absolutely

Eset along with every vendor can improve IMHO, as none of them are perfect at catching malware. In this game, there's always room for improvement, especially as hackers find more clever ways to infect people and get past the various security implementations out there. Don't get me wrong, I am a fan of Eset as well and I too would like to see them improve. I guess for @Robbie and myself, it's not so much that Eset missed something and the system got infected, it's just the torch and pitchfork mob mentality that happens sometimes when a product fails a test, or misses a piece of malware. Is there room for Eset to improve, absolutely, but just because it failed this test, or rather missed a piece of malware, doesn't mean we need to run for the hills and stop using Eset. Regardless of this result, it's still an excellent program that offers top notch protection.

 

[Nightwalker]

I respectfuly disagree with anyone that say ESET has weak default settings, it has one of the most balanced configuration out-of-box in the industry.

ESET default settings has an extremely good balance between protection, false positives and usability; it is there to protect against real world infection cases, not to pass every test or to "win" some geeks hearts.

Anyway this is just one malware sample, I can find some piece of code that can bypass any antivirus any time but it doesnt make those products inadequate, it is just one test, just one sample.


Ps: I am not a ESET shill, funny enough I am mainly a Kaspersky user and I have some machines running Norton Security (using it right now).

 

[RoboMan]

Let's start with the fact that, sooner or later, all antivirus will fail against a sample. And we here at MT know, when that happens, and the final user sees a video with X Antivirus that ended up with the files encrypted, will automatically claim the product sucks. We see it everyday (i'm not saying it's the case now, just using an example).

Having said that, I don't find ESET default settings to be "weak" in a direct way. For an ordinary user, default ESET will be decent, since it has a great web protection + one of the best signature databases, which is actually very quick to new malware and will almost get you thinking it caught it with a behaviour blocker. Now, when these "tests" are made for Youtube, where usually hundreds or even thousands of files are thrown, default ESET will suck, most probably. Taken to extreme scenarios, default ESET isn't great. Because default ESET is meant for ordinary final users. Bussiness, or usually-targeted users, will not be "safe" with default ESET. But for those cases, ESET offers a great variety of options to make out of it one of the most solid products on the internet.

Grab a copy and install it on your main PC. Build your browser with an adblocker, a script blocker and tweak the basic hardening components of Windows. ESET will cover everything even in default without you even having to worry. And you won't need a behaviour blocker, because it can handle it the way it is. With its HIPS on smart mode, and an interactive firewall.

ESET works. It's light, it's not intrusive, it's efficient. Little people I know that ended up infected using ESET when it wasn't intentionally for an "educational Youtube video". Focus on results, don't focus on online tests made for money or views. Install the program, use it a few weeks or months. See the results. Don't throw garbe files to it and check the detection ratio. Don't expect a product to work on unusual conditions, such as a malware-prepared or malware-bundled virtual machine.

 

[Mahesh Sudula]

ESET is a weak AV..over the years many testers and authorities proved the fact:
For instance, Deep behavior inspection, ransomware shield, Botnet protection, exploit mitigation, advanced memory scanner, Advanced DNA heuristics are ear tearing and eye washing,
They say we use ML based hand picked system to minotor threats in real time.
These modules never work since they are not made to work after all. Just to make user a more confident.
Signatures=Eset, Eset=Signatures, If a signature is not there, system is bricked up.
NSS Labs sued Mcafee, Eset,Avira for probing the tests with out proper testing. Infact many believe the same.
THEY CAN DEVELOP FROM THE CORE, INSTEAD OF MARKETING AND GIMMICK STUFF THAT LEADS TO NO WHERE

 

[ForgottenSeer 72227]

Let's start with the fact that, sooner or later, all antivirus will fail against a sample. And we here at MT know, when that happens, and the final user sees a video with X Antivirus that ended up with the files encrypted, will automatically claim the product sucks. We see it everyday (i'm not saying it's the case now, just using an example).

ESET works. It's light, it's not intrusive, it's efficient. Little people I know that ended up infected using ESET when it wasn't intentionally for an "educational Youtube video". Focus on results, don't focus on online tests made for money or views. Install the program, use it a few weeks or months. See the results. Don't throw garbe files to it and check the detection ratio. Don't expect a product to work on unusual conditions, such as a malware-prepared or malware-bundled virtual machine.

I agree with everything you said, especially these parts. Some may see me as anti-testing, but that's far from the truth. I find them valuable and they can provide some interesting information, but often they don't translate to whats really happening in the real world. It's not so much that I hate tests, but rather the constant "oh, x product sucks, it missed 1 piece of malware, it didn't get 100%" that gets thrown around. For the record I'm not trying to single anyone here out, it's just the general reaction every time a test is done, professional, YouTube, or otherwise and a product misses something (comments from YouTube and forums in general).

Like you I always preach to test a product for yourself and make the decision if you like the product or not. Take advantage of the trial periods and use them as long as you can to get a good idea if it's right for you. At the end of the day when you look at everything, all major products, Kaspersky, WD, Eset, Emsisoft, Norton, etc... (all other vendors I missed), pretty much offer excellent protection. The vast majority of users would be fine using a product from any of the the major vendors and be safe. There's far more to a product than how much malware it caught on a "test", such as performance, ease of use, privacy, etc...

I have my parents using Eset AV and I have yet to see them get infected, so despite what a test result may say, it seems like Eset is doing it's job when it comes to my parents computer.

 

[ForgottenSeer 72227]

THEY CAN DEVELOP FROM THE CORE, INSTEAD OF MARKETING AND GIMMICK STUFF THAT LEADS TO NO WHERE

Well to be fair and brutally honest, I would say that the vast majority of av suites and vendors fall under this category. So many suites now a days have so much bloat it's not funny. I don't need another password manager, I already have one, etc...

Most vendors market their products using fear. Why else do you see ads, or popups saying your system may be compromised? This is something I came to learn over the years. I don't buy into their fear tactics anymore, nor do I look for a program with tons of features or marketing mumbo, jumbo, like "AI." I want a product that works, little annoyances and offers great protection. Its why I use WD now and if I do use a 3rd party, it would be either SHP, or Emsisoft. No fuss, no muss, just simple not in your face AVs IMO.