Malware Protection Test Enterprise September 2021 – Testresult

This report is an excerpt of the Business Security Test 2021 (August – November). For more details, please click here.

Introduction

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). 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. behavioral 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, 1,016 recent malware samples were used.

Tested Products

• Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud with Advanced Security pack
  15.0 | 15.0
• Avast Business Antivirus Pro Plus
  21.4 | 21.6
• Bitdefender GravityZone Elite
  7.2 | 7.2
• Cisco Secure Endpoint Essentials
  7.4 | 7.4
• CrowdStrike Falcon Pro
  6.26 | 6.28
• Cybereason Enterprise
  20.2 | 20.2
• Elastic Security
  7.13 | 7.13
• ESET PROTECT Entry with ESET PROTECT Cloud
  8.0 | 8.0
• FireEye Endpoint Security
  33.46 | 33.46
• Fortinet FortiClient with FortiSandbox & FortiEDR
  6.4 | 6.4
• G Data Endpoint Protection Business
  15.1 | 15.1
• K7 Enterprise Cloud Endpoint Security
  14.2 | 14.2
• Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business - Select
  11.6 | 11.6
• Malwarebytes EDR
  1.2 | 1.2
• Microsoft Defender Antivirus with Microsoft Endpoint Manager
  4.18 | 4.18
• Panda Endpoint Protection Plus
  8.0 | 8.0
• Sophos Intercept X Advanced
  10.8 | 10.8
• VIPRE Endpoint Protection Cloud
  12.0 | 12.0
• VMware Carbon Black Cloud
  3.7 | 3.7

Test Results

The following chart shows the results of the Business Malware Protection Test:

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.

	Malware Protection Rate	False Alarms on common business software
G Data, Microsoft, Sophos	99.9%	0
Avast, Bitdefender, Cisco, Elastic, Fortinet, VIPRE, VMware	99.8%	0
Acronis, Cybereason	99.6%	0
CrowdStrike, FireEye	99.4%	0
Kaspersky	99.0%	0
K7, Panda	98.6%	0
Malwarebytes	98.4%	0
ESET	98.2%	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, and the results currently do not affect the overall test score or the Approved Business Product award. The false alarms found were promptly fixed by the respective vendors. Organisations which often use uncommon or non-business software, or their own self-developed software, might like to consider these results, however.

FP rate	Number of FPs on non-business software
Very Low	0-5
Low	6-15
Medium/Average	16-35
High	36-80
Very High	81-125
Remarkably high	>125

 

	FP rate on non-business software
Acronis, Avast, Cisco, ESET, G Data, Kaspersky, Microsoft	Very low
Bitdefender, K7, VMware, VIPRE	Low
CrowdStrike, FireEye, Malwarebytes, Panda, Sophos	Medium/Average
Elastic	High
–	Very high
Cybereason, Fortinet	Remarkably high

 

It should be noted that Cybereason and Fortinet had Remarkably High levels of false positives on non-business software. Administrators should consider whether this might create problems in their organisation’s specific environments. Starting from 2022, products will be required to have an FP rate on non-business files below the Remarkably High threshold in order to be approved. This is to ensure that tested products do not achieve higher protection scores by using excessively restrictive settings that can cause very high levels of false positives.

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AV-Comparatives
(October 2021)