AV-Comparatives’ Security Conference and Award Ceremony for 2019 was held on the 3rd and 4th of February 2020, at the Hotel Klosterbräu, Seefeld in Tirol. Around 40 security experts from all over the world attended. 

In the morning, a round-table discussion of endpoint detection and response (EDR) testing was held. The information gathered will be used for a future test run by AV-Comparatives.

During the afternoon we were proud to welcome our two speakers, one from an academic institute, and one from another testing organisation. Professor Günther Specht from the University of Innsbruck gave a talk on authorship detection, plagiarism and similarity checks, and how to make use this in malware research. Marcus Pritsch from Stiftung Warentest, the German consumer organisation, explained the importance of cybersecurity to consumers.

AV-Comparatives then presented their new testing framework, developed in-house, for security product tests. The AV-Comparatives development team followed this up with a hands-on demonstration of the system and Q&A session for those interested in finding out more.

As well as the talks and discussions on cybersecurity-related topics, the day included the presentation of awards to vendors tested in AV-Comparatives’ 2019 Main Test Series, for both consumer and enterprise security products.

Consumer / Home User Security Products 

AV-Comparatives’ prestigious Product of the Year Award, for the product with the best combined performance across all the tests, went to Bitdefender. Three other products – alphabetically Avast, AVG and Kaspersky – gained Top-Rated Product Awards, for excellent results in the same category.

For each individual test type (Real-World Protection, Malware Protection, Enhanced Real-World, Low False Positives, and Low System-Impact) Gold, Silver and Bronze Awards were given. 10 vendors won awards in this category: Avast, AVG, Avira, Bitdefender, ESET, F-Secure, K7, Kaspersky, McAfee and VIPRE.

The Approved Security Product Award was given to all products demonstrating competent performance across all the test types. These were, in alphabetical order: Avast, AVG, Avira, Bitdefender, ESET, F-Secure, K7, Kaspersky, McAfee, Microsoft, NortonLifeLock, Panda, Tencent, Total Defense, Trend Micro and VIPRE. For further details, please see AV-Comparatives’ 2019 Consumer Summary Report.

Business and Enterprise Security Products 

For enterprise products, AV-Comparatives’ Approved Business Security Award was given to vendors whose products demonstrated good levels of protection and performance across the Business Main-Test Series. These were, in alphabetical order: Avast, Bitdefender, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Elastic, ESET, FireEye, Fortinet, K7, Kaspersky, McAfee, Microsoft, Panda, Seqrite, Sophos, SparkCognition and VIPRE. For further details, please see the report of AV-Comparatives’ Business Security Test August to November 2019.

In addition to the serious side of the event, participants were invited to a beer-brewing course, followed by a horse-drawn carriage ride to a traditional Tyrolean mountain hut for dinner. A beer-glass lifting challenge took place here.

AV-Comparatives’ founder and CEO Andreas Clementi commented, “We were delighted that so many people took part in this event, and helped promote awareness of cybersecurity topics. We would like to congratulate all the award winners on the performance of their products in rigorous independent tests.”

(c) Fotostudio Wedermann / AV-Comparatives