Microsoft’s Vista anti-virus solution slammed
By John Pospisil
Microsoft and three other security vendors have been slammed by security company, Virus Bulletin, for not ”having their (Vista anti-virus) products right by now”.
Windows Live OneCare not up to scratch
Microsoft’s much-hyped anti-virus solution, Live OneCare, as well as McAfee’s VirusScan Enterprise, G DATA’s AntiVirusKit 2007, and Norman’s VirusControl all failed to pass a series of tests that are required to achieve the company’s VB100 certification.
“With the number of delays that we’ve seen in Vista’s release, there’s no excuse for security vendors not to have got their products right by now,’ said John Hawes, technical consultant at Virus Bulletin.
“Security companies voluntarily send in their products for testing and certifying, and I had my head in my hands when I saw how poorly tailored some of the products were.
“The tests conducted in our secure labs were against the most significant viruses and worms affecting real-world users. In these days of hourly updates, it’s always a surprise and a disappointment to see major products missing them. Computer users deserve to see a better performance than this from security vendors.”
In Virus Bulletin’s VB100 tests, each anti-virus product is pitted against a set of viruses from the WildList, a publicly available up-to-date list of the currently circulating viruses.
To earn VB100 certification, products must be able to detect 100% of the viruses contained in the WildList test set and must not generate any false alarms when scanning a set of clean files.
Virus Bulletin tests all products free of charge and does not allow re-testing; performances are reported exactly as they are found.
Security vendors volunteer their products for each test performed by Virus Bulletin. Virus Bulletin’s comparative reviews also cover other performance aspects including detection rates against a selection of zoo viruses and scanning speeds/overheads
While Hawes admitted that security improvements have been made to Vista, he said that Vista was still not able to fend off malware without help from additional security products.
Anti-virus software from CA, Fortinet, F-Secure, Kaspersky, Sophos and Symantec successfully achieved VB100 certification.
Microsoft has promised to improve Live OneCare.
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February 6th, 2007
What a major Microsoft *Burn!*
February 7th, 2007
The beginning of this article states that they did not recieve certification. The end of the article says they did. Could you be a little more ambigious?
February 7th, 2007
No, Charles F., the beginning of article says “Microsoft and three other security vendors … McAfee’s VirusScan Enterprise, G DATA’s AntiVirusKit 2007, and Norman’s VirusControl” failed. The end says “Anti-virus software from CA, Fortinet, F-Secure, Kaspersky, Sophos and Symantec successfully achieved VB100 certification.”
February 7th, 2007
Jeez, Charles. Could you be a little more defensive? Go upgrade already.