A number of websites have recently reported that some laptops funded by the British government for school use were found to be pre-infected with the Gamarue.L worm. 

The BBC states that teachers in Bradford discovered the malware when preparing the laptops for use. They said it appeared to be contacting servers in Russia, and they shared their findings in an online forum. Information security consultant Paul Moore told the BBC that the Gamarue worm “presents a very severe threat to any PC or network“.  Continue reading…

5 Parental Control Software Packages Tested – Only 1 passed the test

AV-Comparatives provides certification for parental control software.

Five vendors submitted their products for certification in 2021, of which only one – Kaspersky – reached the requirements.

In order to be certified, a product must block at least 98% of pornographic websites, have zero false alarms on child-friendly websites, and have no severe unresolved bugs (or design flaws) discovered during the review. A certification is valid for one year and vendors can apply for certification once a year.

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AV-Comparatives has recently released the results of its Enterprise Main-Test Series. This factsheet report comprises of the findings of the first halfyear 2021

Acclaimed independent security software testing platform, AV-Comparatives has recently released the results of its Enterprise Endpoint Protection (EPP) Main-Test Series. This factsheet report comprises of the findings of the Enterprise Malware Protection Test and Enterprise Real-World Protection Test.

By using one of those Enterprise Security Solutions and proper patch management the Colonial Ransomware Disaster could have been prevented easily. The use of security solutions is almost always cheaper than the cost of a successful attack, in this case USD 5 million.

Continuing its impressive work, AV-Comparatives is pleased to announce the release of a new report based on the company’s recently conducted Enterprise Main-Test Series. This test series is dedicated to Enterprise products, and the just released factsheet contains the results of the Enterprise Malware Protection Test and Enterprise Real-World Protection Test. Company sources revealed that the complete report with the Performance Test and product reviews will be published in July.

As part of its Enterprise Main-Test Series, AV-Comparatives evaluated as many as 19 enterprise products under Windows 10 64-bit. The products tested are:

• Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud with Advanced Security pack
• Avast Enterprise Antivirus Pro Plus
• Bitdefender GravityZone Elite
• Cisco Secure Endpoint Essentials
• CrowdStrike Falcon Pro
• Cybereason Enterprise
• Elastic Security
• ESET PROTECT Entry with ESET PROTECT Cloud
• FireEye Endpoint Security
• Fortinet FortiClient with EMS, FortiSandbox & FortiEDR
• G Data Endpoint Protection Enterprise
• K7 Enterprise Security Advanced
• Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Enterprise – Select, with KSC
• Malwarebytes EDR
• Microsoft Defender Antivirus with Microsoft Endpoint Manager
• Panda Endpoint Protection Plus on Aether
• Sophos Intercept X Advanced
• Vipre Endpoint Cloud
• VMware Carbon Black Cloud Endpoint Standard

“In Enterprise environments and with Enterprise products in general, it is usual for products to be configured by the system administrator, in accordance with vendor’s guidelines, and so we invited all vendors to configure their respective products. Only a few vendors provide their products with optimal default settings which are ready to use and did therefore not change any settings.” said AV-Comparatives co-founder Peter Stelzhammer.
The report provides a brief overview of the results of the Enterprise Real-World Protection Test run carried out in March and April 2021. A test set consisting of 373 test cases (such as malicious URLs) was used to arrive at the results.

The Malware Protection Test was conducted to evaluate a security program’s ability to protect a system against infection by malicious files before, during or after execution. 1,008 recent malware samples were used for this test. A false alarm test with common Enterprise software was also performed. All tested products had zero false alarms on common Enterprise software.

To access the just published test results from AV-Comparatives, please visit https://www.av-comparatives.org

About AV-Comparatives:
AV-Comparatives is an independent organisation offering systematic testing to examine the efficacy of security software products and mobile security solutions. Using one of the largest sample collection systems worldwide, it has created a real-world environment for truly accurate testing. AV-Comparatives offers freely accessible results to individuals, news organisations and scientific institutions. Certification by AV-Comparatives provides a globally recognised official seal of approval for software performance.
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AV-Comparatives released the results of the anti-phishing certification test. This qualification test is the most comprehensive anti-phishing test available.

AV-Comparatives publishes test results of security companies passing the 2018 phishing challenge

The independent security software tester AV-Comparatives released the 2018 results of the yearly anti-phishing certification test. This yearly qualification test is the most comprehensive and challenging anti-phishing test available.

Relevance of specialized Anti-Phishing protection

Phishing is an attempt to obtain sensitive personal or financial information such as usernames, passwords, credit card and banking details for malicious and fraudulent purpose by posing as a reputable entity or person. Phishing attempts typically contain a message (the bait) in a trustworthy look and feel containing a link (the hook) to a malicious website.

Three security vendors pass the 2018 challenge – Avast, Fortinet, Kaspersky

Security products passing the challenge have proven to successfully block at least 90% of malicious URL’s. These URL’s were fresh and active phishing campaigns, which we collected, verified and analyzed through our real-world malware testing environment. The freshness of our test set is what makes our phishing protection test so challenging and unique.

The follwing vendors reached the certification:

Avast
Fortinet
Kaspersky

Read the full report here!

Read the full test methodolgy here!