Malware Protection Test Enterprise September 2023 – Testresult

This report is an excerpt of the Business Security Test 2023 (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. 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, 1,009 recent malware samples were used.

Tested Products

• Avast Ultimate Business Security
  23.7 | 23.8
• Bitdefender GravityZone Business Security Premium
  7.9 | 7.9
• CISCO Secure Endpoint Essentials
  8.1 | 8.1
• CrowdStrike Falcon Pro
  6.58 | 7.01
• Cybereason NGAV
  22.1 | 22.1
• Elastic Security
  8.9 | 8.9
• ESET PROTECT Entry with ESET PROTECT Cloud
  10.1 | 10.1
• G Data Endpoint Protection Business
  15.6 | 15.6
• K7 On-Premises Enterprise Security Advanced
  14.2 | 14.2
• Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business – Select, with KSC
  12.1 | 12.2
• Microsoft Defender Antivirus with Microsoft Endpoint Manager
  4.18 | 4.18
• Sophos Intercept X Advanced
  2023.1 | 2023.1
• Trellix Endpoint Security (ENS)
  10.7 | 10.7
• VIPRE Endpoint Detection & Response
  13.0 | 13.1
• VMware Carbon Black Cloud Endpoint Standard
  3.9 | 3.9
• WatchGuard Endpoint Protection Platform
  8.0 | 8.0

The “ENS” version of Trellix in this test uses the erstwhile McAfee engine (now owned by Trellix), opposed to the “HX” version which uses the FireEye engine (McAfee Enterprise and FireEye were merged into Trellix in 2022).

Test Results

False positive (false alarm) test with common business software

A false alarm test done with common business software was also performed. All 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
VMware	100%	0
ESET	99.9%	0
Bitdefender, VIPRE	99.8%	0
Avast, CISCO, G Data, Kaspersky, Trellix	99.7%	0
CrowdStrike	99.6%	0
Microsoft	99.5%	0
Elastic	99.1%	0
Cybereason	98.6%	0
Sophos	98.3%	0
WatchGuard	94.8%	0
K7	94.6%	0

 

False-Positives Test

In order to better evaluate the products’ detection accuracy and file detection capabilities (ability to distinguish benign files from malicious files), we also performed a false alarm test on non-business software and uncommon files. Results are shown in the tables below; the false alarms found were promptly fixed by the respective vendors. However, organisations which often use uncommon or non-business software, or their own self-developed software, might like to consider these results. Products are 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 settings that might cause excessive levels of false positives.

FP rate	Number of FPs on non-business files
Very Low	0-5
Low	6-15
Medium/Average	16-35
High	36-75
Very High	76-125
Remarkably high	>125

 

	FP rate on non-business files
Avast, Bitdefender, ESET, G Data, Kaspersky, Microsoft, Trellix, VIPRE	Very low
Cybereason, WatchGuard	Low
CrowdStrike, K7, VMware	Medium/Average
Elastic	High
CISCO, Sophos	Very high
–	Remarkably high

 

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AV-Comparatives
(October 2023)