How we test
We get hands-on with every single product in the group test, ensuring that its features and interface all work as they’re supposed to and highlighting any friction points. However, long-term testing with live malware samples is required to genuinely evaluate how effective any given antivirus solution is at protecting your system against malicious software.
For this, we turn to data produced by a number of well-regarded anti-malware testing houses: specifically, SE Labs in the UK, AV-Test in Germany and AV-Comparatives in Austria. All three publish their test data and methodologies, making them available to the public, as well as the press and industry professionals. Data for this Labs test came from the following tests:
AV-Test Home Windows test October 2023 tinyurl.com/355avtest
AV-Comparatives Real-World Protection Test July-October 2023 tinyurl.com/355avcomp
SE Labs Essential Endpoint Security Home 2023 Q3 tinyurl.com/355selabs
We’ve used the most recent available data in all cases. If a specific product isn’t tested, we use results for products based on the same detection engine. If a product hasn’t been tested recently by all labs, we’ve referred back to historic test data to provide insight into its long-term performance (this includes AV-Test’s Jan/Feb 2023 data and SE Labs’ tests from Q1 2023).
In evaluating test data, we place the greatest weight on “real-world” testing, in which antivirus software is exposed to live malware samples in a realistic scenario, such as web exposure, rather than flat file scans of a large collection of malware samples.
We also take into account performance impacts, measured by AV-Test, and false positive identifications of legitimate software.