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Anti-malware test reveals unstable products
December 2010 by Virus Bulletin
Virus Bulletin, the independent security certification body, has revealed the results of its latest VB100 certification on Windows 7 Professional.
Of 64 anti-malware products tested, 20 failed to reach the standard required for certification - but the testing team was more disappointed by the lack of stability found amongst products.
"This comparative has shown that while many solutions are solid, reliable and dependable, many others have serious issues with stability under pressure," said John Hawes, Anti-Malware Test Director.
"The level of quality seen in some products this month would be unacceptable in any software - and in security solutions it is especially unforgivable. Users need to be able to trust in their security product, to rely on it to keep them as safe as possible; that trust is a fragile thing, as easily destroyed by flakiness and crashes as it is by failure to protect against malware or misdiagnosis of clean software as malicious."
Hawes explained the importance of tests such as those run by Virus Bulletin: "The proliferation of fake or ’rogue’ security product scams makes it more important than ever for computer users to be able to find out quickly and easily if a given solution is legitimate and genuine. Participation in the VB100
tests is free for all vendors - allowing any genuine product the chance to be put through our tests and thus have its legitimacy confirmed."
The record number of security solutions taking part in the company’s certification process this month demonstrate the importance of the VB100 stamp of quality to the growing range of vendors entering the market, as well as to their current and potential users.
The VB100 review provides a wealth of data that gives insight into how the various solutions stack up against each other in a wide range of ways, including some detailed performance analysis as well as detection rates and the testing team’s thoughts on the user experience.
Virus Bulletin has been testing and certifying anti-malware products for more than ten years in the VB100 certification scheme. The stringent VB100 tests pit anti-malware products against a test set of malware from the WildList - a publicly available up-to-date list of the malware that is known to be
circulating on computers around the world. To earn VB100 certification, products must be able to detect 100% of the malware contained in the WildList test set and must not generate any false alarms when scanning a set of clean files.
