“New malicious programs and viruses appear every day and it is evident that antivirus database updates, even hourly, are not enough to provide users with reliable protection from possible Internet threats. There is always a time “gap” between the appearance of a new threat and the release of an update. So to provide effective antivirus protection it is important to effectively detect new threats,” says the head of the AV-Comparatives lab Andreas Clementy.
AV-Comparatives conducted a series of tests in order to compare the effectiveness of various antivirus solutions' on-demand detection of malicious programs (by the program scanner). This method makes it possible to estimate the effectiveness of the heuristic analyzer, one of the components of the proactive protection system. The testing included 17 antivirus products for home users with antivirus databases that were dated August 5, 2007. The sample of malicious programs used in the tests appeared after this date.
Based on the results, Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7.0 was awarded the highest certification—Advanced+, which confirms the program has the highest level of detection of new malicious programs with minimal false positives using the antivirus program's heuristic analyzer. It should be noted that only 1 other products tested was awarded this certification.
“Kaspersky Lab developed and introduced a new heuristic analyzer in it's version 7.0 home user products in the summer of this year. In June 2007 this new module first participated in AV-Comparatives' testing and immediately received the Advanced+ certificate,” says Deputy Director of the Innovation Technologies Nikolay Grebennikov. “This is a long-awaited and very significant assessment of Kaspersky Lab’s work.”
The heuristic analyzer is only one of the components of the proactive protection module included in Kaspersky Lab products. Contrary to most competitors’ products, Kaspersky Lab products provide additional protection: a behavior blocker, which blocks the activity of malicious programs based on their behavior. The effectiveness of this module was also tested by AV-Comparatives in June 2007, with the test developers commenting: “The results of the tests performed with the randomly chosen malicious programs have confirmed the highest protection level and the effectiveness of the behavior blocker, which is awarded the Proactive Protection Award of the AV-Comparatives test laboratory.”
To find out more about the report “Comparison of different malware protection technologies”, or for more information about the Proactive Protection Award, please visit AV-Comparatives.org
About Kaspersky Lab
Kaspersky Lab delivers the world’s most immediate protection against IT security threats, including viruses, spyware, crimeware, hackers, phishing, and spam. Kaspersky Lab products provide superior detection rates and the industry’s fastest outbreak response time for home users, SMBs, large enterprises and the mobile computing environment. Kaspersky technology is also used worldwide inside the products and services of the industry’s leading IT security solution providers. Learn more at www.kaspersky.com. For the latest on antivirus, anti-spyware, anti-spam and other IT security issues and trends, visit www.viruslist.com.
