Should Microsoft quit the AV business?
An illuminating study was performed by AV-Comparatives, comparing various popular antivirus products. I haven’t had the opportunity to test out OneCare, Microsoft’s antivirus offering, but I assumed they had released a product that was at least comparable to other mainstream antivirus options. Apparently, I shouldn’t assume.
ccording to the comparison, Microsoft scored an abysmal 82.40% total on-demand detection of viruses/malware. That’s over 6 percentage points lower than the the next-worst contender (Dr. Web, at 89.27%). At the other end of the spectrum, Avira PE Premium, G DATA Security AVK, MicroWorld eScan Anti-Virus, F-Secure Anti-Virus, Kapersky Labs Kapersky AV, and AEC TrustPort AV WS were all rated above 97% detection, which AV-Comparatives calls their “ADVANCED+” certification level.
Keep in mind, it’s only a 1.x product from Microsoft, so they may be leaving room for improvement. But I expected more from Microsoft with all the marketing about their security initiatives.
Here’s the full results of the test: http://www.av-comparatives.org/seiten/ergebnisse_2007_02.php
Found via PCMag.
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The whole Microsoft + AV thing is an interesting situation. I think they will purposely not be one of the “best” vendors so that they don’t completely step on the toes of the industries that their product has created. In addition, I don’t think they can get away anymore with putting out an unprotected OS and just let the vendors fill the security space. It just hurts them too much.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this minimal offering from MS stays minimal until future OS versions start taking it over fully.
Can you imagine the impact in the security industry if MS put out a secure version of Windows that didn’t need the Symantec’s and McAfee’s of the world? There’d be riots and lawsuits for sure!