14 DAY TRIAL // AV-Comparatives has performed a new series of tests to determine the best antivirus solution for Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, and unsurprisingly, Kaspersky, Avast, AVG, Bitdefender, and Avira earned the highest scores.
Out of a total of 20046 recent samples of malware, Avast, AVG, Tencent, and Trend Micro managed to block them all, achieving a protection rate of 100 percent.
Symantec, Bitdefender, and Panda got pretty close with 20045 blocked threats and 99.99 percent protection rate, while Avira and Microsoft detected 20044 of the samples for the same rate, but with 2 compromised records.
Windows Defender, in particular, performed remarkably well, but lost points due to way too many false positives. Panda was the king of the false positives with 327 such alarms, followed by Trend Micro with 166 and Tencent with 93. Windows Defender issued 70 false positives on clean files.
Offline detection tests
AV-Comparatives also conducted offline and online detection tests to determine just how dependent to the cloud the tested security products are.
The highest detection rate without an active Internet connection was achieved by F-Secure, Bitdefender, BullGuard, and Emsisoft, while in online mode, Microsoft’s Windows Defender and Symantec topped detection tests with 99.9% rate. In terms of protection with an Internet connection, Avast, AVG, Tencent, and Trend Micro scored the best with 100% rate.
“We would suggest that vendors of highly cloud-dependent products should warn users appropriately in the event that the connectivity to the cloud is lost, as this may considerably affect the protection provided,” the research organization notes.
Overall, six different products received the top Advanced+ rating, namely Avast, AVG, Bitdefender, AVIRA, Emsisoft, and Kaspersky. Four of them earned the Advanced award – VIPRE, McAfee, BullGuard, and F-Secure, while the Standard award was offered to five products, including Microsoft’s Windows Defender.
AV-Comparatives says Windows Defender lost points because of false positives, and if Microsoft manages to improve detection in this regard, a higher award would certainly be earned.
