Business Security Test March-April 2018 – Factsheet
| Release date | 2018-05-15 |
| Revision date | 2018-05-11 |
| Test Period | March - April 2018 |
| Number of Testcases | 620 Real-World 1470 Malware Protection |
| Online with cloud connectivity |  |
| Update allowed | |
| False Alarm Test included | |
| Platform/OS | Microsoft Windows |
Introduction
This is a short fact sheet for our Business Main-Test Series, containing the results of the Business Malware Protection Test (March) and Business Real-World Protection Test (March-April). The full report, including the Performance Test and product reviews, will be released in July.
We congratulate the 16 vendors who are participating in the Business Main-Test Seriesfor having their business products publicly tested by an independent lab, showing their commitment to improving their products, being transparent to their customers and having confidence in their product quality.
To be certified in July as an “Approved Business Product” by AV-Comparatives, the tested products must score at least 90% in the Malware Protection Test, and at least 90% in the overall Real-World Protection Test (i.e. over the course of 4 months), with zero false alarms on common business software. Tested products must also avoid major performance issues and have fixed all reported bugs in order to gain certification.
Please note that the results of the Business Main-Test Series cannot be compared with the results of the Consumer Main-Test Series, as the tests are done at different times, with different sets, different settings, etc.
Tested Products
The following products were tested under Windows 10 RS3 64-bit:
Information about additional third-party engines/signatures used by some of the products: Emsisoft, eScan, FireEye and VIPRE use the Bitdefender engine.
Settings
In business environments, and with business products in general, it is usual for products to be configured by the system administrator, in accordance with vendor’s guidelines, and so we allowed all vendors to configure their respective products. About half of the vendors provide their products with optimal default settings which are ready to use, and did therefore not change any settings. Cloud and PUA detection have been activated in all products. We do not include any PUA in our malware tests.
Below we have listed deviations from default settings (i.e. setting changes applied by the vendors):
Bitdefender: HyperDetect disabled, Sandbox enabled.
CrowdStrike: everything enabled and set to maximum, i.e. “Extra Aggressive”.
Endgame: Enabled Software and Hardware protection options: “Critical API Filtering”, “Header Protection”, “Malicious Macros”, “Stack Memory”, “Stack Pivot” and “UNC Path”; Protected Applications: “Browser”, “Microsoft Suite”, “Java” and “Adobe”. Exploit Protection: “On – Prevent mode”; Malicious File Configuration: “On” – Protection at File Execution “On”; Options: “Prevent”, “Process execution and loaded modules”, Malware Detection for created and modified files “On”; “Aggressive” threshold.
FireEye: “Real-Time Indicator Detection”, “Exploit Guard” and “Malware Protection” enabled.
Fortinet: Real-Time protection, FortiSandbox, Webfilter and Application Firewall (in order to use Detect & Block Exploits) enabled.
McAfee: “Email attachment scanning” enabled; “Real Protect” enabled and set to “high” sensitivity, read/write scan of Shadow Copy Volumes disabled.
Microsoft: Cloud protection level set to “High blocking level.
Trend Micro: Behaviour monitoring: “Monitor news encountered programs downloaded through web” enabled; “Certified Safe Software Service for Behaviour monitoring” enabled; “Smart Protection Service Proxy” enabled; “Use HTTPS for scan queries” enabled; Web Reputation Security Level set to Medium; “Send queries to Smart Protection Servers” disabled; “Block pages containing malicious script” enabled; Real-Time Scan set to scan “All scannable files”, “Scan compressed files to Maximum layers 6”; “CVE exploit scanning for downloaded files” enabled; “ActiveAction for probable virus/malware” set to Quarantine; Cleanup type set to “Advanced cleanup” and “Run cleanup when probable virus/malware is detected” enabled; “Block processes commonly associated with ransomware” enabled; “Anti-Exploit Protection” enabled; all “Suspicious Connection Settings” enabled and set to Block.
Avast, Emsisoft, eScan, ESET, KasperskyLab, Panda, SaintSecurity, VIPRE: default settings.
Test Results
Real-World Protection Test (March-April)
This fact sheet gives a brief overview of the results of the Business Real-World Protection Test run in March and April 2018. The full report will be released in July. The overall business product reports (each covering four months) will be released in July and December. For more information about this Real-World Protection Test, please read the details available at http://www.av-comparatives.org. The results are based on a test set consisting of 620 test cases (such as malicious URLs), tested from the beginning of March till the end of April.
| Blocked | User dependent | Compromised | PROTECTION RATE [Blocked % + (User dependent %)/2]* |
False Alarms | |
| Bitdefender, McAfee | 620 | – | – | 100% | 1 |
| Panda | 620 | – | – | 100% | 3 |
| Trend Micro | 620 | – | – | 100% | 14 |
| Avast, Kaspersky Lab, VIPRE | 618 | – | 2 | 99.7% | 0 |
| ESET | 616 | – | 4 | 99.4% | 0 |
| Emsisoft | 614 | – | 6 | 99.0% | 0 |
| CrowdStrike | 613 | – | 7 | 98.9% | 0 |
| Endgame | 610 | – | 10 | 98.4% | 0 |
| Fortinet | 609 | – | 11 | 98.2% | 3 |
| Microsoft | 589 | 31 | – | 97.5% | 4 |
| eScan | 603 | – | 17 | 97.3% | 0 |
| Saint Security | 569 | – | 51 | 91.8% | 11 |
| FireEye | 536 | – | 84 | 86.5% | 0 |
* User-dependent cases are given half credit. For example, if a program blocks 80% by itself, and another 20% of cases are user-dependent, we give half credit for the 20%, i.e. 10%, so it gets 90% altogether.
Malware Protection Test
The Malware Protection Test assesses a security program’s ability to protect a system against infection by malicious files before, during or after execution. The methodology used for each product tested is as follows. Prior to execution, all the test samples are subjected to on-access scans (if this feature is available) by the security program (e.g. while copying the files over the network or from a USB device, or saving from webmail). Any samples that have not been detected by the on-access scanner are then executed on the test system, with Internet/cloud access available, to allow e.g. behavioural detection features to come into play. If a product does not prevent or reverse all the changes made by a particular malware sample within a given time period, that test case is considered to be a miss. For this test, 1,470 recent malware samples were used.
False positive (false alarm) test with common business software
A false alarm test done with common business software was also performed. As expected, all the tested products had zero false alarms on common business software.
The following chart shows the results of the Business Malware Protection Test:
| Malware Protection Rate | False Alarms on common business software | |
| Avast, Bitdefender, Panda, Trend Micro | 100% | 0 |
| Microsoft | 99.9% | 0 |
| Emsisoft, McAfee, Kaspersky Lab | 99.7% | 0 |
| eScan, VIPRE | 99.5% | 0 |
| Endgame | 99.3% | 0 |
| Fortinet | 99.0% | 0 |
| CrowdStrike | 98.8% | 0 |
| ESET | 97.8% | 0 |
| Saint Security | 97.6% | 0 |
| FireEye | 95.9% | 0 |
In order to better evaluate the products’ detection accuracy and file detection capabilities (ability to distinguish good files from malicious files), we also performed a false alarm test on non-business software and uncommon files. This is provided mainly just as additional information, especially for organisations which often use uncommon non-business software or their own self-developed software. The results do not affect the overall test score or the Approved Business Product award. The false alarms found were promptly fixed by the respective vendors.
| FP rate | non-business software |
|---|---|
| Very low | |
| Low | |
| High | |
| Very high | |
| Remarkably high |
| FP rate on non-business software | |
| Avast, Bitdefender, Emsisoft, eScan, ESET, FireEye, Fortinet, Kaspersky Lab, McAfee, VIPRE | Very low |
| Saint Security | Low |
| Endgame, Microsoft | High |
| CrowdStrike, Panda, Trend Micro | Very high |
| – | Remarkably high |
Copyright and Disclaimer
This publication is Copyright © 2018 by AV-Comparatives ®. Any use of the results, etc. in whole or in part, is ONLY permitted after the explicit written agreement of the management board of AV-Comparatives prior to any publication. This report is supported by the participants. AV-Comparatives and its testers cannot be held liable for any damage or loss, which might occur as result of, or in connection with, the use of the information provided in this paper. We take every possible care to ensure the correctness of the basic data, but a liability for the correctness of the test results cannot be taken by any representative of AV-Comparatives. We do not give any guarantee of the correctness, completeness, or suitability for a specific purpose of any of the information/content provided at any given time. No one else involved in creating, producing or delivering test results shall be liable for any indirect, special or consequential damage, or loss of profits, arising out of, or related to, the use or inability to use, the services provided by the website, test documents or any related data.
For more information about AV-Comparatives and the testing methodologies, please visit our website.
AV-Comparatives
(May 2018)