Bravo F-secure! (Winner of AV-C Performance Test October 2020)

[vonvon]

I read this morning :

Performance Test October 2020 - AV-Comparatives

AV-Comparatives released their latest Performance Test Report for consumer security products under Microsoft Windows 10. 17 consumer products were tested regarding their impact on system performance. But keep in mind: Protection is more important than speed!

www.av-comparatives.org

f-secure the lightest !
On my computer, very light too.

 

[FireHammer]

Hi, as long Bitdefender is among top 5 I am happy too, Congratulations F-Secure Users!

 

[Spawn]

I don't see what there is to get excited about.

The future F-secure updates may thrash your CPU or I/O performance.

If your hardware meets the recommended requirements for both the Operating System and Antivirus software, then apps -technically- should run as expected, except for when they don't.

 

[EndangeredPootis]

Congrats to your made up results, I just dont understand why people still belives these sites does a legit job.

 

[Spawn]

Congrats to your made up results, I just dont understand why people still belives these sites does a legit job.

The results aren't definite for every user, but they are real from their testing methods.

Your views on AV-testing sites are quite clear.
Quoted from the weblink page:

Please note: We want to make clear that the results in this report are intended only to give an indication of the impact on system performance (mainly by the real-time/on-access components) of the consumer security products in these specific tests. Users are encouraged to try out the software on their own PC’s and see how it performs on their own systems.

 

[Freud2004]

You are kidding, right? They are selling reviews? Well done, bravo..... F-secure don't have a firewall....... they should compare with the AV solution from Kaspersky or Bitdefender or other.... but they compare with the suites with firewall, obvious that is faster if I turn off KIS firewall my internet speed is lot faster.

Very good review.... the best I see in many years....

The following activities/tests were performed under an up-to-date Windows 10 1909 64-Bit system:

• File copying
• Archiving / unarchiving
• Installing / uninstalling applications
• Launching applications
• Downloading files
• Browsing Websites
• PC Mark 10 Professional Testing Suite

 

[McMcbrad]

You are kidding, right ? They are selling reviews? Well done, bravo..... F-secure don't have a firewall....... they should compare with the AV solution from Kaspersky or Bitdefender or other.... but they compare with the suites with firewall, obvious that is faster if I turn off KIS firewall my internet speed is lot faster.

Very good review.... the best I see in many years....

The following activities/tests were performed under an up-to-date Windows 10 1909 64-Bit system:

• File copying
• Archiving / unarchiving
• Installing / uninstalling applications
• Launching applications
• Downloading files
• Browsing Websites
• PC Mark 10 Professional Testing Suite

The difference in performance doesn’t come from the 2 areas you have mentioned, you can see that everybody got perfect results there, regardless whether they had a firewall or not. It comes mostly from the Passmark performance benchmark toolkit and the other areas, you have not highlighted

 

[Freud2004]

The difference in performance doesn’t come from the 2 areas you have mentioned, you can see that everybody got perfect results there, regardless whether they had a firewall or not. It comes mostly from the Passmark performance benchmark toolkit and the other areas, you have not highlighted

No that is not a fair methodology and you know, your reviews are fair their are not, they should compare AV with AV, suit with suit.
That is not a good example of best practices, they are not compare detection ratio, they take in count browsing and internet speed.

 

[McMcbrad]

No that is not a fair methodology and you know, your reviews are fair there are not, they should compare AV with AV, suit with suit.
That is not a good example of best practices, they are not compare detection ratio, they take in count browsing and internet speed.

Yes, when I review software I review it as an overall - you can see that I take into account many areas. But I am a human and I recognise many, many factors, whilst AV-Comparatives, according to their website, uses a toolkit, or to put it simply - a bot. This is because they don’t have enough human resources. Nobody says it is great, but that’s how much they can do.
They are not saying “F-Secure is the best, buy them ASAP”, they are just using a simple and somewhat clever method, to point out who performs best. You as an end user decide what you will buy and use.

 

[SeriousHoax]

No that is not a fair methodology and you know, your reviews are fair their are not, they should compare AV with AV, suit with suit.
That is not a good example of best practices, they are not compare detection ratio, they take in count browsing and internet speed.

The thing is you can't take every little details into account. If you do then you'll have put quite a few of them out of there. Some AV do HTTPS scanning and some don't. Those who does tend to be slower compared to something that don't. Eg: Windows Defender has the fastest browsing speed on my system while I can feel the slowness while browsing with Kaspersky/ESET, etc which does HTTPS scanning. Now if you want to group these separately then you'll have to take Avira, F-Secure, G Data, McAfee, Microsoft, NortonLifeLock, Panda, Total AV, Total Defense, Trend Micro, VIPRE out of these group. That's 11 out of 17. It doesn't make sense. Some from these AV don't even have web protection at all, some are also free AV. There are many other differences too. It's not just about Firewall. So you will have put them into several other groups. Testing like that is not realistic at all.
So here they tested some products which paid them to participate in the test and here are the results.

 

[McMcbrad]

The thing is you can't take every little details into account. If you do then you'll have put quite a few of them out of there. Some AV do HTTPS scanning and some don't. Those who does tend to be slower compared to something that don't. Eg: Windows Defender has the fastest browsing speed on my system while I can feel the slowness while browsing with Kaspersky/ESET, etc which does HTTPS scanning. Now if you want to group these separately then you'll have to take Avira, F-Secure, G Data, McAfee, Microsoft, NortonLifeLock, Panda, Total AV, Total Defense, Trend Micro, VIPRE out of these group. That's 11 out of 17. It doesn't make sense. Some from these AV don't even have web protection at all, some are also free AV. There are many other differences too. It's not just about Firewall. So you will have put them into several other groups. Testing like that is not realistic at all.
So here they tested some products which paid them to participate in the test and here are the results.

And plus solutions that don't have firewall will have Windows Firewall enabled, so there will be no configuration where performance is tested without such. Also, I am not convinced a firewall will really slow down the traffic to a level that can be felt.

 

[SeriousHoax]

And plus solutions that don't have firewall will have Windows Firewall enabled, so there will be no configuration where performance is tested without such. Also, I am not convinced a firewall will really slow down the traffic to a level that can be felt.

I previously saw a couple of complainants that Kaspersky slow down internet for them. Maybe it's an issue which hasn't been fixed yet if he's really experiencing it.

 

[venustus]

Kaspersky had a certificate issue warning because of it scanning https,but I have not had the problem since...Maybe others can chime in,

 

[upnorth]

I think it's pretty important to try understand that the quoted test included stable version 17.8. F-Secure is not really a company known for releasing " stable " versions that nuke/destroy peoples machines/systems. Today, the latest stable version is 17.9 and considering that version includes several " performance improvements ", next test should probably be the same or maybe even better, but that we will know for sure when that test is shared/posted.

In general from what I know and what I seen over many many years, F-Secure has very few genuine performance issues if any. F-Secures issues lays elsewhere and for those that follow the development progress, know or recall that when version 17.8 was released, it had followed a beta test that lasted over 1 year. That could very well been one reason why F-Secure got a good performance result. But it got a less good result in another test where the previous history of a bit too much false positives made it's return. It clearly shows what F-Secure needs to work on and improve.

A small advice for those people that seems to go ballistic/rant like nuts over AV tests. Please calm down and go outside for a bit of fresh air! These tests comes with disclaimers. Read those! The results is Not and never will be the end of the world.

Kaspersky had a certificate issue warning because of it scanning https,but I have not had the problem since...Maybe others can chime in,

Probably better talked about in the Kaspersky section or the actual AV-Comparatives thread.

AV-Comparatives - Consumer Performance Test October 2020

AV-Comparatives released their latest Performance Test Report for consumer security products under Microsoft Windows 10. Performance Test October 2020 - AV-Comparatives 17 consumer products were tested regarding their impact on system performance. But keep in mind: Protection is more important...

malwaretips.com

 

[upnorth]

@Freud2004 , was my posted text/advise/hint not understood for some reason?

Probably better talked about in the Kaspersky section or the actual AV-Comparatives thread.

AV-Comparatives - Consumer Performance Test October 2020

AV-Comparatives released their latest Performance Test Report for consumer security products under Microsoft Windows 10. Performance Test October 2020 - AV-Comparatives 17 consumer products were tested regarding their impact on system performance. But keep in mind: Protection is more important...

malwaretips.com

 

[Freud2004]

@Freud2004 , was my posted text/advise/hint not understood for some reason?

Yes I understood, but I don't read all the lines. Sorry about that, maybe its better delete my post if convenient.

Tanks upnorth

 

[upnorth]

Yes I understood, but I don't read all the lines. Sorry about that, maybe its better delete my post if convenient.

Tanks upnorth

I helped and moved it where it fits better.

AV-Comparatives - Consumer Performance Test October 2020

AVG/Avast in Idle AVG/Avast whilst running Octane browser performance test in the background: Does it have HTTPS scanning? They used to have I know but later disabled due to a security issue. Don't know if they have enabled it again or not. Try checking CPU and disk usage while you browse...

malwaretips.com

 

[SeriousHoax]

F-Secure is good in terms of performance but its removal engine is a disaster.
I tried it today to mainly check the lightness. It wrongly detected one file but I was able to restore and exclude that. Then it detected two more files, both are false positives but one of them is detected by some other products also so that detection is acceptable.
After detection it scanned the system for few seconds in the background in both cases then asked for a restart, so I did. But after the restart I saw that both of the files were completely removed from the system. They were not in the quarantine, not in the list of blocked application. Only visible in the recent activity panel but there's no way to restore the files or anything. F-Secure previously had problems with malware removal and this time it completely removed file from the system while it should've been put into the quarantine. The false positive rate is already higher than average and now this. Awful, buggy removal engine, terrible experience. Uninstalled.

 

[upnorth]

They were not in the quarantine, not in the list of blocked application. Only visible in the recent activity panel but there's no way to restore the files or anything. F-Secure previously had problems with malware removal and this time it completely removed file from the system while it should've been put into the quarantine.

Please explain a bit more. So your saying/state that F-Secure can not restore files at all and also that malicious files does not end up in quarantine, am I understanding that correct?

 

[SeriousHoax]

Please explain a bit more. So your saying/state that F-Secure can not restore files at all and also that malicious files does not end up in quarantine, am I understanding that correct?

No. I gave two examples above about three detection. For the first file I was able to restore it without any problem. The file was detected by signatures then I restored it. The file was back. I ran the file and this time it was detected by DeepGuard. I managed to restore it again.
Then for other two files (not related to the first one) were detected. F-Secure notified about the detection and also said it's going to scan the PC. I don't remeber the exact word of the notification, maybe you're familiar with that. Anyway, I checked task manager and there was moderate amount of CPU usage so I figured it was doing the scan in the background. After few seconds CPU usage stopped and I was asked to restart the PC. There was even a notification about remind me when to restart. I chose two hours later. Another file then got detected and the same notification, scan, asking for restart happened again. This time I manually restarted. After restarting both file were gone from the system, not even in the quarantine. The files were actually deleted even before the restarting but I didn't check quarantine then. I only checked it later. One was a signature detection, the other one was "HEUR/APC". The later one is Avira cloud detection as far as I'm concerned. So, yeah my files are gone from the system with no option to restore them in the F-Secure UI. Looks like a bug of the removal engine.