avast! antivirus delivers results for free

avast! Free Antivirus scored better than some of the best-known paid products in the latest Virus Bulletin test, proving cost is not an effective measurement of quality.

avast! Free Antivirus detected all In-the-Wild viruses – including the newest W32/Virut samples – on a computer running Windows Vista. The tests were made by the Virus Bulletin, an independent authority on computer security.

“With extra kudos for prettiness, reliability and ease of testing, avast! comfortably wins another VB100 award,” wrote John Hawes, team director of Virus Bulletin’s VB100 testing program, in his August 2010 review.

In addition to spotting 100% of the In-the-Wild viruses, avast! Free Antivirus was a top performer in VB’s battery of malware detection tests, beating out paid products from McAfee and Symantec.

“Our competitors will have a real workout trying to convince people that they should pay more for less protection,” said Vince Steckler, CEO of AVAST Software.

avast! Free Antivirus stood out in VB’s reactive and proactive detection tests. Reactive detection measures the ability of a security solution to find new viruses and quickly add them to its virus-signature database. avast! significantly outperformed both Symantec and McAfee in this area, benefiting from its huge free user base which channels new virus samples to the avast! Virus Lab. This CommunityIQ is an avast! feature that no other brand can match.

Nevertheless, the strength of avast! goes far beyond its ability to quickly get samples of new virus variants. VB’s proactive test examined each security solution’s ability to detect new viruses without an updated signature database, forcing them to rely on heuristic and behavioral analysis. In this test, avast! Free Antivirus again outperformed both Symantec Endpoint Security 11.0 and McAfee Total Protection 10.5.

ABOUT VIRUS BULLETIN:
Virus Bulletin is a leader in providing independent commentary on computer security issues. The VB100 test published in their August 2010 issue analyzed 54 antivirus programs on identical computers with AMD Phenom II x2 550 processors at 3.11 GHz, 4 GB RAM, and dual 80GB and 1TB SATA hard drives, running Microsoft Windows Vista Business Edition SP2 (x32). For more information, go to www.virusbtn.com.

by Lyle Frink
www.avast.com