Security news
Security news12 March 2008
McAfee, Symantec or Sophos: Who is the best at virus detection, proactive protection and response? Independent comparison by AV-Test.org confirms quality of Sophos anti-malware solution
IT security and control firm Sophos has been found in an independent test to be superior to Symantec and McAfee at protecting proactively against zero-day malware attacks, detection of known malware, spyware and adware, and responding quickly to new widespread attacks.
AV-Test.org tested 30 different anti-virus products on Windows XP (Service Pack 2) to see how well they detected 1,130,556 unique malware samples. Sophos accurately detected 98.1% of the malware achieving a rating of "very good", and outperforming McAfee (95.6%) and Symantec (95.7%) who were labelled as "good".
In addition, Sophos received a ranking of "very good" when it came to proactive detection of new, unknown malware, compared to a rating of "good" for McAfee and Symantec.
According to the test results released by AV-Test.org, Sophos also outperformed Symantec and McAfee when it came to response time to new widespread malware. Both McAfee and Symantec have been ranked as "satisfactory" with a typical response time of 4-6 hours, compared to Sophos's "good" 2-4 hours.
"Sophos continues to innovate and improve the techniques used to protect against viruses, Trojans, spyware, adware and other threats. It's particularly gratifying to see Sophos praised for being 'very good' at detecting unknown malware," said Guy Edsall, product manager at Sophos. "Sophos received high scores across the board. Combining these excellent protection capabilities with Sophos's underlying philosophy of simple management has been the driver behind many companies switching from Symantec and McAfee to Sophos."
- Learn more about the test on the AV-Test.org website
- See how well your anti-virus performed in AV-Test.org's malware detection test
- View a chart summary comparing the 30 different security products
About AV-Test.org
AV-Test.org is a project of the Business-Information-Workgroup at the Institute of Technical and Business Information Systems at the Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg (Germany) in cooperation with AV-Test GmbH. At regular intervals AV-Test.org tests anti-virus, anti-spyware and personal firewall software on behalf of producers and magazines. Within the scope of product certification AV-Test.org works together with the tekit Consult Bonn GmbH (TÜV Saarland group).
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About Sophos
Sophos enables enterprises all over the world to secure and control their IT infrastructure. Sophos's network access control, endpoint, web and email solutions simplify security to provide integrated defenses against malware, spyware, intrusions, unwanted applications, spam, policy abuse, data leakage and compliance drift. With over 20 years of experience, Sophos protects over 100 million users in nearly 150 countries with its reliably engineered security solutions and services. Recognized for its high level of customer satisfaction and powerful yet easy-to-use solutions, Sophos has received many industry awards, as well as positive reviews and certifications.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com
See also:
- Learn more about awards, independent comparative reviews, and tests of Sophos products
- McAfee, Sophos, Symantec: Who is the best at stopping zero-day attacks?
- Which anti-virus? Sophos beats McAfee and Symantec in an independent product review
- Proactive detection of unknown malware - a real test of anti-virus software
