Antivirus Test Results

Before you renew or install software to protect your company’s computers, you may want to look at recent test results. PC Magazine reports that while Microsoft Security Essentials is free, its protection has been getting slammed in antivirus tests in the last few months. The vast majority of antivirus products manage to pass certification with AV-Test; not Microsoft.

In November and again in January Microsoft failed certification. The Microsoft product team issued a rebuttal basically stating that the test in question didn’t measure their actual real-world protection. However, a new test just released by London-based Dennis Technology Labs puts Microsoft in last place, way behind all of its competition.

The Dennis Labs accuracy test aims to measure a product’s ability to “block all threats and allow all legitimate applications.” Products gain points both for correctly blocking threats and for correctly leaving legitimate software alone; they also lose points for blocking legitimate software and for failing to identify malware. The best possible score is 400 points; the worst, -1000 points. With 388.5 points Norton Internet Security (2013) came close to the maximum. All the rest earned at least 300 points, except Microsoft, which took a paltry 30 points.

Some products lost significantly due to false positives. Trend Micro in particular would have had a noticeably higher score were it not for these deductions. Not Microsoft. It earned that low score strictly due to poor detection of threats, with no deduction for false positives.