Which security product stops the
most zero-day virus threats?
When new viruses, worms and other malicious attacks strike, traditional signature-based
technology is insufficient. Every minute you wait for an update is another minute
that your computer and network are vulnerable to damage, infection, or identity
theft. ThreatSense® Heuristics closes the window of vulnerability by safely
identifying and stopping malware as it runs on your computer.
NOD32 has consistently been rated as the best protection against zero-day outbreaks
and attacks by the world's leading antivirus testing organisations.
- http://www.av-comparatives.org/ is
an Austrian research lab that performs retrospective tests.
- http://www.virustotal.com/ produces a newsletter listing vendors that detect outbreaks as they occur.
- AV-Test.org is a joint-research project of the University Magdeburg and AV-Test GmbH.
Contact Us for a free antivirus trial to the end of this month.
AV-Comparatives
The independent testing institution AV-Comparatives.org is an antivirus research
project coordinated by Andreas Clementi with the support of the Innsbrucker Kompetenzzentrum
/ Computernotdienst.
The AV-Comparatives.org "Retrospective/Proactive
Test" compared 11 different antivirus products' abilities to proactively
identify the increasing complexity and zero-day nature of today's threats. The
stringent testing used recent In-the-Wild samples and a variety of other malware,
Trojans, viruses and worms affecting Windows and other operating systems. To
effectively test the products for proactive detection, the organization used
new malware samples, and tested them against the products without updating the
antivirus signature.
The November study revealed that of the eight
new viruses that have been released In-the-Wild in the preceding three months,
customers of Symantec, Trend Micro and Kaspersky had proactive detection for
none of these threats, leaving them at risk until the vendors could provide a
signature update. McAfee customers were only protected from a single virus without
updating.
ESET's NOD32 customers were protected four
times more often against new viruses, and 95% more often across all new samples
used in the test, including In-the-Wild threats, backdoors, Trojans and other
malware.
This is the second study conducted by AVComparatives.org
on this topic in 2005. Over the course of both studies, NOD32 proactively detected
50 out of 59 In-the-Wild samples used, or 85%. More details can be found at http://www.av-comparatives.org/
The graph shows the accuracy of heuristic-based
detection and the performance of several antivirus vendors' products. The data
is derived by determining whether or not a given antivirus product detects a
new virus without requiring a signature update. If it does, then heuristic detection
has succeeded (note: in some cases, well-written signatures can detect future
variants).
AV-Test.org
AV-Test is a joint-research project of the University Magdeburg and AV-Test GmbH.
The Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg is located in Germany and has over
13,500 students. The tests are conducted in the research labs at the Workgroup
Business Information Systems at the Institute of Technical and Business Information
systems.
Currently, the virus test lab has two professors and approximately
fifteen students working regularly on virus replication, analysis and tests of
antivirus products. AV-Test GmbH is a security consultancy company with a special
focus on computer virus incidents.
Source: Test performed for c't Magazine, "Die Leibwächter:
17 Virenscanner für Windows XP und Vista"
by Dirk Knop (Issue 05/2007, pages 142-153), based on data of AV-Test.org
NOD32's heuristics still remain undefeated.
With one-month old signatures, the scanner found nearly 80% of the threats. Even
the inexperienced users can modify the settings easily.
NOD32's fast scanning speed is a definite positive,
finishing the tests quickly while keeping a good detection rate of Zoo viruses.
Small size of update files, fast scanning speed and accurate detection make NOD32
an all-round winner in the leading group of antivirus programs.
VirusTotal.com
This independent consulting firm based in Spain performs
real-time analysis of malware outbreak detection across a wide range of antivirus
vendors.
As you can see from the graph below, NOD32
has by far the highest detection rate, and the fastest performance (tested separately
by Virusbulletin). In fact, NOD32 is on average, 2-10 times faster than the competition.
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