This is one of these days that make me really proud to be a member of the McAfee family. I just received the very latest third-party test results from AV-TEST.org. AV-TEST has built a reputation for doing very thorough, “real world” tests of endpoint security products. They’ve been testing consumer endpoint products for a long time and just last year instituted a very good enterprise endpoint-testing program.
For the third quarter in a row, both McAfee’s consumer product, Total Protection 2012, and our enterprise product suite incliuding, VirusScan Enterprise with ePO 8.8, HIPS 8.0 & SAE 3.5, achieved certification. Not only did both of our flagship endpoint solutions achieve certification, but they both received better evaluations than any McAfee products in the history of AV-TEST’s reports.
AV-TEST evaluates endpoint products on three different metrics: core protection, repair and usability. They assign each product tested a score from 1 to 6 in each of the three metrics. While we tend to focus on the core protection metric, the repair and usability scores are important variables in the purchase decisions made by customers large and small.
Besides certifying both products, AV-TEST gave Total Protection 2012 a protection score of 5 out of 6 points, marking only the second time in two-plus years of testing that McAfee’s consumer product scored this well for core detection. On the enterprise side the VSE 8.8 suite got a protection score of 5.5–the highest protection score any McAfee product has ever received from AV-TEST.
For comparison, Total Protection 2012 outscored the comparable products from AVG, Trend Micro, and Microsoft among others. the VSE 8.8 suite outscored the enterprise solutions offered by F-Secure, Sophos, Trend Micro and, of course, Microsoft.
From a total evaluation perspective, this quarter was also record setting. Both Total Protection 2012 and the VSE 8.8 suite received a total score of 13 of 18 points, both of which are historical highs for McAfee products.
As McAfee’s Senior VP of Product Management for McAfee Labs, Rees Johnson, observed, “These latest results from AVTEST.org represent the third test cycle in a row for which both our Enterprise and Consumer products have been certified and each of the three results demonstrates material progress over the previous test cycle. This clearly demonstrates the progress being made within McAfee Labs across all technologies including the core detection engine, remediation, false-positive rates, and the Trusted Source functionality that can be found in Site Advisor and Site Advisor Enterprise and the results we can achieve when we attack an issue like this with focus and energy.”