In a recent Forbes article, Dave Altavilla a Forbes contributor, recounts a familiar tale – that he is constantly asked to clean up friends and relatives’ PCs – something that many a techie will relate to – but he goes on to quote a recent antivirus review from Dennis Labs – one of the more reputable labs offering Antivirus reviews (unlike these top XX antivirus review websites)… and the results were NOT a surprise to us.
Dave says:
Dennis Technology Labs recently released a report (PDF) on Home Anti-Virus Protection Software efficacy. It’s a detailed report that rates anti-malware and AV packages from many of the major solutions providers. As it turns out, the variation in quality of protection and security, between the top packages out there currently, is drastic and significant. My top security package of choice last year was dead last of course. Apparently, Microsoft Security Essentials, while free and light-weight on system resources, routinely gets ripped to shreds by the latest malware exploits. Uggh. So much for being the “expert” in the family. That will teach them to interrupt my holiday roast beef binging with “Uncle Dave, can you fix my PC?”
Umm.. yes, sorry Dave – Microsoft Security Essentials is junk – we know it and anyone with any real knowledge in the AV business knows it as well. Sorry… MSE = Junk.
He goes on…
The above graphic is perhaps the most telling. DTL steps through some of the more popular antivirus/anti-malware products on the market currently, showing out of a total of 100 incidents, the number of times a product either successfully defended the host machine, neutralized the threat, or was compromised. Microsoft Security Essentials was compromised almost 40% of the time, which was by far the worst showing of the group. AVG and McAfee brought up the rear as well but with much less vulnerability at 12 and 9 percent respectively.
hmmm.. what are our top product?
KAV
ESET
We also sell others – but our top two products came out top-two in this test: