If you're going to go out, at least go out with a bang. This seems to be Microsoft's motto for Windows Live OneCare, a security solution that, in the latest comparative tests performed by AV-Comparatives, managed to best almost all rival products, including offerings from Eset, BitDefender, Kaspersky, AVG, Avast, Sophos, Symantec, McAfee, Norman, Kingsoft, G Data and F-Secure. OneCare, which has but a few more months to live, had a proactive detection rate of new malware of 60%. Only Avira AntiVir Premium 8.2.0.374 managed to score higher, with a detection rate of 69%.The tests performed by AV-Comparatives were focused on the generic and heuristic techniques security products use in order to detect and stop malicious code for which no virus signatures exist. AV-Comparatives only updated the security solutions tested until February 9, 2009, and used malware samples from February 9 until February 16.
“AV-Comparatives published the May edition of its proactive/retrospective testing to measure 16 anti-virus vendors’ capability in detecting new threats. Microsoft anti-virus received one of only 3 Advanced+ ratings. Our detection rate was 60%, the second best among the participants, and we had the fewest false positive samples,” revealed a member of the Forefront team.
Eset's Nod32 delivered a proactive malware detection rate of 56%, BitDefender 12.0.11.4 managed just 50%, AVG Anti-Virus 8.0.234 - 45%, Avast professional Edition 4.8 – 42%. For Sophos Anti-Virus 7.6.4 the detection rate was 37%, 35% for Symantec Norton 16.2.0.7, 25% for McAfee VirusScan Plus 13.3.117 and 14% for F-Secure Anti-Virus 9.00.149.
Still, what recommends Windows Live OneCare's proactive protection over that of its rivals is the extremely low number of false positives. OneCare did not have more than a couple of false positives, which means that the security solution is highly unlikely to detect genuine files as malware. Read More .....
