MSE receives negative press after av-test.org test

[bogdan]

From Neowin.net:

Microsoft's free antivirus solution for all Windows users may be good in terms of usability - in particular, its impact on system performance - but when it comes to actual malware protection, it came almost dead last amongst its free and paid competitors in tests conducted during the first quarter of 2011 by German testing firm AV-Test. In fact, an almost identical observation can be made for AV-Test's previous tests conducted in the fourth quarter of 2010 on Windows Vista. Fortunately for Microsoft, despite these results the product did manage a pass and a certification from AV-Test.

Same negative tone can be seen in PCWorld's article or Techworld.com.

 

[bogdan]

It is also worth noting that in the test 2 free plain antivirus products (MSE and avast) were put against payed full security suites. Avast also received a bad score. A plain antivirus has no chance to protect you against 0-day threats as effective as a full suite so the results are as expected, however the media seems to be focusing at finding the looser of this test instead of finding the winner (Bitdefender had a great score).

Another interesting aspect is that CIS is among the 5 suites that failed to obtain the certification.

 

[Guest28]

I do not take this test for granted. We don't know the testing methods used for this test. I am surprised BitDefender got a better score than Avast or MSE. It seems to me maybe they got paid from vendors to pass them? That's, my guess and i'm sticking to it. I am surprised, that CIS would fail with it's auto-sandbox.

 

[bogdan]

I don't take a single test for granted either. There are some great free security solutions out there and I like the idea of not having to pay for security unless you want to support the authors but I've seen allot of people advocating against free security. Up to some point they are right, if the majority of users are using the same free signature based detection, malware authors will have an easier job. But at this point I don't think this is a valid concern. A payed AV can be as bad/good as a free one. I don't like comparing full security suites against free AV-s.

 

[Valentin N]

MSE only passad because it didn't give any FP or very few.

 

[Mark]

BitDefender Internet Security blocked more than avast! Internet Security in March 2011 and November 2010 at AV-Comparatives.

It seems to me that BitDefender has been improving since the 2011 version was released.

 

[silviu_c]

Oh there's nothing like fear of becoming irrelevant. It first happened to the firewall vendors now it happens to AV vendors. When MS locked them out of the kernel they all cried FOUL! and "oh noes MS locked us out", never mind that their meddling with the kernel often caused systems to crash. Then MS put out MSE and showed them how to write proper code again and since MSE is not just a demo but a product that is actively being developed and improved AV vendors are afraid they will lose their business.

This here is the reason why even more irrelevant publications like PCWorld will gladly accept money and write articles that have the purpose to convince people that free is bad.

 

[Jack]

:goodpost:
------------------------------------------------------
Ok...so AV-Test Product Review and Certification Report - 2011/Q1 tested only the "Internet Security" versions of the products......the only two products that weren't a security suite are : MSE and Avast Free...

So when PCWorld and other security magazines are saying that MSE "did bad" in this test I do hope that they know that an internet security suite has more features that can prevent 0 day malware when compared with a standard antivirus...so it's quite normal to see a lower protection rate for MSE against 0 day threats when compared with a full internet security suite la NIS or BitDefender. :shy:

So let's compare what we can really compare .......MSE vs Avast Free


[attachment=203]
http://www.av-test.org/reports/2011q1/avtest_report_microsoft_110968.pdf
[attachment=202]
http://www.av-test.org/reports/2011q1/avtest_report_avast_110985.pdf

If we will look closely we will see that MSE manage to protect the VM of Av-test.org better in February than Avast did. :s ..So what conclusion should we take.....only one : malware threats are dynamic.

MSE is a very good antivirus .....but generally speaking,you as a user have to know that only an antivirus can't give you 100% protection rate....and that PC security starts with you.
I do agree with silviu_c and just because MSE didn;t performed perfectly in March tests dosen't make it a worse antivirus than Avast or Avira.

 

[Larry]

Both my daughter and I got a fake av popup on our computers using MSE but also got them using the paid PC doctor av. I realize that all antivirus software is only as good as the definition updates. Even Kaspersky missed a test virus when placed in a sub folder. This is one reason why I use Geswall in conjunction with conventional av scanners. Also, none of the above av scanners recognized the presence of the rouge av even as the things were popping up on the screen.

 

[bogdan]

Speaking of rogues, the user behind the computer is probably the best protection against them. Malware today can be extremely different from what an antivirus had to detect years ago. We used to have mostly patching viruses, on execution a virus searched for executables on your disk and appended it's content to them. This is something a good application never needs to do. Experts could identify the malicious code and build a signature. But today we have malware that can behave like every other legitimate application. There is nothing suspicious about an application that draws a GUI on the screen and asks for money. And malware authors can write this type of application in an infinite number of ways (different code) so even if an antivirus is able to catch all of them today, tomorrow a new one will probably be undetected. So it falls upon the user to see that there is something suspicious about it.

Back on the subject, journalists that write tech. articles are probably smart enough to understand that an av doesn't compare to a full security suite. They could for example target McAfee (the Neowin article doesn't even mention it) or praise BitDefender but they wrote about MSE instead. silviu_c might be right.