Roskachestvo together with ICRT International Consumer Research and Testing summarized the results of yet another study of antiviruses for Mac and Windows operating systems. Experts evaluated the antivirus’s ability to resist malware, tested its usability, how much resources it takes to use it, and determined the top 5 antiviruses for both operating systems.
Roskachestvo annually conducts antivirus surveys in cooperation with similar international monitoring organizations. Comparative tests are conducted in leading European laboratories, whose objectivity and impartiality have been proven in numerous studies. The results of this research are published in more than 50 countries around the world. These laboratories have the highest reputation among the global IT community, in particular, they test their anti-viruses the world’s leading manufacturers. The names of the labs involved in the study are not being revealed, in order to avoid pressure from manufacturers and to avoid influencing the results.
The current antivirus survey was conducted during 2018. Experts from international laboratories have collected the latest versions of malware in 40 locations around the world that were on the Internet at the time of the tests and tested antiviruses on them.
Experts selected 35 programs from 19 manufacturers for antivirus testing both paid and free versions were included in the study : 10 of them were for macOS operating system, 25 for Windows. All antiviruses were tested against 365 quality and security indicators in three categories: anti-malware effectiveness 65% of the total score , usability 25% of the total score and resource consumption 10% of the total score .
Each product was scanned with laboratory instruments to check its ability to fight various kinds of viruses, worms and Trojan-bankers Trojan-Banker, Trojan-PSW, Trojan-Ransom, Trojan-Spy, Trojan-Downloader . “More than 90 million different pieces of malware appear each year, and they are spread through multiple channels, most often through email services. Often, for example, all kinds of incoming emails from unknown recipients contain virus attachments. The most common types of viruses are Trojans, encryptors and spyware. A virus infection can lead to loss of personal and payment data which can lead to extortion of funds, and also to a complete loss of working capacity of a computer or even a local network”, says Ilya Loevsky, deputy head of Roskachevo.
The antiviruses were tested for their ability to resist malware by scanning the system in both “real-time” and “on-demand” modes – scanning. Real-time testing is required to evaluate an antivirus’s ability to prevent web-borne infections. The test program included opening links to malicious sites, including phishing sites safe browsing mode is disabled , connection of a flash drive with malicious programs 180 programs – for Windows, 120 – for macOS and their launch, as well as attempts to install ransomware 771 programs . An innovation of this year’s study was the test for user decision, since some anti-virus programs shift the responsibility for opening links or launching unknown programs to the user.
The purpose of the on-demand testing was to estimate how many malware out of 10,000 for Windows and 100 for Android, 5 for macOS would be detected by the antivirus offline, online and at runtime opening files . In addition, digital products were examined for false positives, as well as their ability to block phishing sites 200 links . More details on the test program can be found here. Four tests were conducted over the year, so the total number of malware checks for Windows was 40,000, for Android – 400, for macOS – 20.
Additionally, experts examined the usability of antivirus programs, specifically, how easy it would be for a standard user to understand the settings and interface. To this end, experts from international labs studied four main groups of indicators: the help section, interface and navigation, usability and personalization of settings, as well as the installation and removal process of the antivirus program.
Testing of resource consumption was also included in the antivirus testing program. The experts evaluated the computer’s speed switching the device on and off, opening web sites, copying and downloading files, archiving and unarchiving, installing and launching programs , the amount of RAM needed and how much space an antivirus occupies on the hard drive.
Global industry leaders acknowledge that the research is conducted according to all standards and independently calculates the viruses that caused damage to their system. So, antiviruses “learn” from viruses that they missed the first time and can identify them the second time: Analyzed by the antivirus software, these viruses are automatically saved to the antivirus cloud.
For the purity of the experiment, this time the experts conducted an additional test: all malicious programs that were not caught in the four phases of the test were restarted after all the tests. This test was conducted to see if antiviruses had learned to recognize relatively old malware and if there were any viruses caught in the open network that were stronger than antiviruses.
Note that a study is already underway that will be published in 2020 – and surely the companies that didn’t perform best this year will have a chance to get better.
Survey results
Windows
According to the test results, the best antiviruses for Windows software were:
1st place: Bitdefender Internet Security best in its ability to protect your computer from malware .
2nd place: ESET Internet Security protects your computer well and is one of the easiest to use .
3rd place: Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition free version, first place winner . It protects your computer almost as well but with fewer features .
4th place: Norton Security Deluxe it protects your computer well, consumes few resources and is quite easy to use .
5th place: Avast Free Antivirus less usable than the previous four, but very good protection and low resource consumption .
Places 6 through 10 were distributed among Trend Micro Internet Security, Avast Internet Security, F-Secure SAFE, AVG Antivirus Free and AVG Internet Security.
Windows, installed by default, improved its results compared to last year’s tests, proving to be good in the test of protection against threats from the Internet and stopping all ransomware viruses.
macOS
1st place: ESET Cyber Security Pro one of the best in terms of malware protection and usability .
2 place: Kaspersky Internet Security protects best of all computers, is convenient, but consumes a lot of resources .
3rd place: Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac good protection for your computer, easy to use .
Rounding out the top five were G Data Antivirus for Mac and Norton Security Deluxe.
As for MacOS built-in antivirus protection, it was again in last place, just like last year. However, its overall score went down, as it performed worse this time, not stopping almost any virus.
The investigative experience of Group-IB one of the leading international companies in prevention and investigation of cybercrime and high-tech fraud shows that many infected machines of bank employees had
the most popular antiviruses were installed, but they did not save the infection, and as a result, intruders could get control of the bank network and withdraw money from it. “A sysadmin at a American bank could access the bank’s servers from his home computer. This became the entry point – hackers got into the bank’s systems through it and roamed freely inside for almost three weeks, figuring out how to steal the money. There was an antivirus in the bank, and he was almost daily “yelling,” recording how attackers are scanning the ports of servers and workstations and use various hacking tools. No one paid any attention to the “alarm” until several tens of millions were stolen from the bank,” said the press service of Group-IB.
What are the top anti-virus options according to Roskachestvo’s 2019 rating?