One thing I always hate to do is to find the best Antivirus program by trial and error. I have always heard about Kaspersky and NOD32 and i kinda liked NOD32. For free software, I always look towards Avast or AVG. Of course, that is what I knew. But what i did not know was that there are some new players in town.
Virus.gr tested quite a few different software companies to see how they would stack up against each other. How did the 147,000+ virus test pan out? Here are the results
1. Kaspersky version 6.0.0.303 - 99.62%
2. Active Virus Shield by AOL version 6.0.0.299 - 99.62%
3. F-Secure 2006 version 6.12.90 - 96.86%
4. BitDefender Professional version 9 - 96.63%
5. CyberScrub version 1.0 - 95.98%
6. eScan version 8.0.671.1 - 95.82%
7. BitDefender freeware version 8.0.202 - 95.57%
8. BullGuard version 6.1 - 95.57%
9. AntiVir Premium version 7.01.01.02 - 95.45%
10. Nod32 version 2.51.30 - 95.14%
11. AntiVir Classic version 7.01.01.02 - 94.26%
12. ViruScape 2006 version 1.02.0935.0137 - 93.87%
13. McAfee version 10.0.27 - 93.03%
14. McAfee Enterprise version 8.0.0 - 91.76%
15. F-Prot version 6.0.4.3 beta - 87.88%
16. Avast Professional version 4.7.871 - 87.46%
17. Avast freeware version 4.7.871 - 87.46%
18. Dr. Web version 4.33.2 - 86.03%
19. Norman version 5.90.23 - 85.65%
20. F-Prot version 3.16f - 85.14%
21. ArcaVir 2006 - 83.44%
22. Norton Professional 2006 - 83.18%
23. AVG Professional version 7.1.405 - 82.82%
24. AVG freeware version 7.1.405 - 82.82%
25. Panda 2007 version 2.00.01 - 82.23%
26. Virus Chaser version 5.0a - 81.47%
27. PC-Cillin 2006 version 14.10.1051 - 80.90%
28. VBA32 version 3.11.0 - 79.12%
29. ViRobot Expert version 4.0 - 76.22%
30. UNA version 1.83 - 75.44%
There’s the list and as you can see there are several towards the top that really surprised me.
I expected NOD32, Avast, and AVG to perform a little better than they did. The site reports that NOD32 and AVG definitely fought back at the heuristic testing. Heuristic testing is extremely important because that is what gives an Antivirus the ability to catch a virus even it is not in the database.
Here are the best performers in Heuristic Scanning
1. Nod32 2.51.30 - 41503
2. Vba32 3.11.0 - 32911
3. VirIT 6.1.9 - 16469
4. AVG 7.1.405 Professional - 13624
5. AVG 7.1.405 freeware - 13624
6. Rising AV 18.41.30 - 12214
7. McAfee 10.0.27 - 10708
8. Ikarus 5.19 - 7191
9. F-Prot 6.0.4.3 beta - 6247
10. Ukrainian National Antivirus 1.83 - 5506