West Coast Labs West Coast Labs provides for popular free antivirus products: Microsoft Security Essentials, Avast, AVG, and PC Tools. These antivirus programs are tested against a stream of newly-collected malware samples gathered 24/7. The real-time nature of the results is unique. Other organizations put together new test results monthly – or even less often. Virus Bulletin Virus Bulletin magazine regularly tests antivirus products.
Products that detect all virus samples with no false positives receive the VB100 award. To see how an antivirus program is doing, you can look at a variety of reports, including and a.
The products at the top of the chart are doing fairly well, while you’re probably better off avoiding the products that are consistently at the bottom. AV-Comparatives AV-Comparatives regularly performs a variety of tests, including real-world protection tests, file detection tests, and malware removal tests. The results of these tests are. For a quick look at how different antivirus programs are doing, you can view a or read the. This report is published in December of each year and summarizes how the security products performed in tests over the previous year. AV Test AV Test performs regular tests of antivirus programs, ranking their ability to protect a computer, how well they repair infections, and their usability (which includes how much they slow down your computer). The are display how well an antivirus performed on different versions of Windows, although no Windows 8 test results are available yet.
You don’t necessarily have to switch antivirus products if your program isn’t at the very top of the charts – these results change from month to month, anyway – but these test results can give you an idea of how well your antivirus is performing. If you’re using one of the products that’s consistently at the bottom of the charts, you’ll probably want to switch. While these tests may not be perfect, they’re the best thing we have for evaluating how effective antivirus programs actually are.