“Everything ought to happen slowly, and out of joint, so we don’t get above ourselves, so we remain miserable and confused”
Venedikt Yerofeev. Moscow Stations
I never thought I’d ever use this phrase when talking about the antivirus industry, but that’s what it’s come to.
You know, not everything in this world progresses smoothly.
Economic realities and the need for new customers often manage to lure even the best over to the dark side.
This time, one of the best-known test labs in the AV industry – AV-TEST – has succumbed.
Comparative testing: A bit of background for the uninitiated
How do you go about picking the best of any particular product? And how do you know it’s the best? Well,
you would probably start by looking at the results of comparative testing in a specialist magazine,
or the online equivalent. I’m sure this is not news to you. The same goes for AV solutions – there are a number
of test labs that evaluate and compare a huge variety of antivirus products and then publish the results.
Now, for some unknown reason (below I’ll try and guess why exactly) the renowned German test lab
AV-TEST has quietly (there was no warning) modified its certification process. The changes mean that
the certificates produced by the new rules are, to put it mildly, pretty useless for evaluating the merits of
different AV products.
Yes, that’s right. I officially declare that AV-TEST certification of AV solutions for home users no longer allows
product quality to be compared adequately. In other words, I strongly recommended not using their certificate listings
as a guide when choosing a solution to protect your home PC. It would be natural to believe that two products that both
have the same certification must be equal (or close to equal) in performance. With AV-TEST’s new certification standards,
the onus is on the user to carefully investigate the actual results of each individual test…they may find that a product
that blocked 99.9% of attacks has the same “certification” as a product that only blocked 55%.