Microsoft's Security Solutions Explode - Top Sophos, Nod32, McAfee and Trend Micro

In the latest anti-virus comparatives performed by AV-Test, Microsoft's security solutions exploded to an over 95% detection rate, topping household names such as Sophos, Nod32, McAfee and Trend Micro. According to the comparison put together by AV-Test, Microsoft came in tenth place out of a collection of no less than 29 security products. AV-Test's Andreas Marx revealed that the testing was conducted on a copy of Windows XP Service Pack 2 and that it involved the on-demand scanner utility of the products. All the security solutions tested were bombarded with approximately 900,000 unique malware samples. Both OneCare and Forefront Client Security held their own delivering an increased performance in comparison with past tests.

"All products were last updated at 2007-08-10 (8:00 h GMT). The scan required about a week completing on 28 identical Core 2 Duo 6600 PCs with 2 GB RAM. We only used regular products and updates (no special or beta versions) of all scanners, in their most current edition for home users or small companies (the ones which are usually labelled "2007", as the "2008" series of products are not yet released)," Marx stated. "For this test, we only used current samples which were seen spreading (or which were distributed by malware authors) within the last six months. A total of 874.822 unique malware have been used for this test, including worms, backdoors, bots (zombies) and Trojan Horses."

GDATA's AntiVirusKit came in first with a detection rate of 99.88%. The runner up was the Webwasher gateway with 99.86% detection, but both solutions are in fact multi-engine products. "The first two products in this round of testing (AVK 2007 and WebWasher) uses two scan engines, what is good for detection scores, but which might also have some impact on scanning times and false positives. Positions 3 (BitDefender) and 4 (AntiVir) are occupied by single-engine products," Marx added.

BitDefender and Avira's AntiVir had 99.51% and respectively 99.29% detection rates. Kaspersky came in fifth with 98.86% detection, followed by F-Secure with 97.93%, Avast with 96.99%, AVG with 96.81% and Symantec with 96.75% in ninth place. Microsoft came in tenth with a detection rate of 96.42%.

"The products representing position 10 (Microsoft's OneCare and Forefront Client Security) were quite a surprise to us, as their detection scores have developed significantly in the good direction over time. (When compared with our last test, they are more than 10% up.) It looks like that the high amount of malware researchers Microsoft has hired from other AV companies (including many people from Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro, F-Secure and CA) has paid off," Marx revealed.