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Sophos Detects More New Unknown Malware Than Any Other Security VendorKaspersky comes the second |
By Bogdan Popa, Security and Search Engines Editor
5th of December 2007, 13:52 GMT
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There are a lot of antivirus technologies out there, most of them sustaining that their features are the best on the market and more efficient than the rivals'.
Some say Kaspersky is the best, others think McAfee is better, while numerous users choose Norton Antivirus as the leader. A recent study published by security company Sophos revealed that it discovered "more new unknown malware reported to the independent AVIEWS mailing list in a four month period than any other vendor," as it is mentioned in a press release published on its website.
"Most anti-virus reviews only examine products' ability to detect known malware, rather than determining who does the best job at protecting proactively against zero-day threats and unknown viruses. It's becoming more and more important to have an industrial strength defense against both known and unknown malware as virus writers and hackers step up their attempts to steal money and identities with targeted attacks," said Guy Edsall, product manager at Sophos.
"We're obviously delighted to find that we provide a higher level of protection against unknown malware than our competitors - but we won't be resting on our laurels, and customers can expect to see us continuing to work hard to enhance our detection of unknown threats even further", he added.
The second position was won by Kaspersky, which managed to discover 65 percent of the new threats while Ikarus, a pretty anonymous technology, came in the third, with 60 percent. ESET's NOD32 version 2 spotted only 50 percent of the malware, the same percentage as Microsoft, F-Secure and AVG. Symantec, one of the leaders when it comes to antivirus capabilities, received only 35 points, while Avast, the creators of the freeware antivirus, detected a disappointing 25 percent of the threats.
If you want to download a trial version of the Sophos Antivirus, you can take it straight from Softpedia using this link.
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Good (3.1/5) |
6 vote(s) so far |
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User opinions: |
| Comment #1 by: David Harley on 20 Dec 2007, 18:20 GMT |  reply to this comment | Sorry, but you've misread that Sophos press release. The test was neither conducted by nor endorsed by AVIEWS: our only connection was that Sophos based its sample set on a smattering of alerts sent to an AVIEWS mailing list. They did ask for permission to use the AVIEWS name, but they'd never have received it if we'd known how they were going to use it: AVIEWS is an offshoot of AVIEN, and it's against the ethos of the organizations to promote one vendor at the expense of the others. Furthermore, most of us consider this to be pretty poor test methodology.
David Harley, AVIEN Administrator |
| Comment #2 by: Andrew Lee on 22 Dec 2007, 01:56 GMT | reply to this comment | "But, the recent antivirus tests conducted
by security companies, the ones that should be most trusted, have disclosed that Sophos Antivirus is the best solution when it comes to blocking unknown malware. The study, conducted by AVIEWS"
This is utterly wrong. SOPHOS did this test themselves, and published it themselves, and, while they sought permission to use the name, they did so without revealing the nature of this test.
This was not a scientifically valid study, nor was it a study conducted by AVIEWS. For the record, this test is neither endorsed by AVIEWS nor its sister group AVIEN, as neither organisation makes any claims about the competence or otherwise of any participating vendor.
No participation in the testing was made by AVIEWS, and no 'results' were offered for pre-approval, as clearly, such approval would not have been given.
AVIEWS is vendor neutral group, but includes many members from different AV vendors. Alert data is provided by the participants in that group - including Sophos. It's quite clear then that it would be easy to bias any such test, simply by feeding your own alerts into the system after ensuring detection. This was a poor test, with invalid methodology, and this is a poor reporting of the press release in the article, which misrepresents the reality of the situation. |
| Comment #3 by: David Harley on 02 Jan 2008, 11:00 GMT | reply to this comment | I can't believe you've printed the comments of the administrators of both the organizations you've misrepresented without correcting the article and headline! |
| Comment #4 by: David Harley on 16 Jan 2008, 12:23 GMT | reply to this comment | Thank you for making those corrections. |
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