All postsBad guys evolve; defenders evolve; testing (should) evolve
Latest endpoint protection reports now online for enterprise, small business and home users.
These reports represent the state-of-the-art in computer security endpoint testing. If you want to see how the very best security products handle a range of threats, from everyday (but nevertheless very harmful) malware to targeted attacks, this is a great place to start.
Criminals and other attackers need to succeed to survive, so they don’t give up just because their first efforts fail. They adapt. As a result, the security companies that provide protection to Windows PCs try to keep up and, if we’re lucky, get ahead of the bad guys’ developments.
This means that existing technologies change and improve. At the same time new products appear on the market to either compete directly or plug gaps perceived in more ‘traditional’ solutions. It’s an arms race and on-going testing is a really good way to determine how well that fight is going.
But tests also need to adapt, otherwise improvements will go unrecognised and brave claims unchallenged. ‘Easy’ tests, that don’t recognise ways in which attackers behave today, aren’t good enough anymore.
SE Labs has always been at the cutting edge of security testing and the way we put products through their paces has encouraged the involvement of well-established security vendors and inspired newer ones to step up.
Most noticeably in our reports on business products, we’ve seen most of the best-known new vendors join our testing programme, encouraged as they are by the relevance and credibility of SE Labs’ testing. They like how we pay attention to detail and disclose that detail with maximum transparency. It’s rare to see reports of these newer products elsewhere.
We can’t test every product all the time, so we include new ones in each report where we can. If you read back over the last few reports you should see wide coverage of the best-known products and some you’ve probably never heard of.
I encourage you to read past the initial awards and graphs, and dig into some of the detail deeper in this report. Find out if your preferred product is generally great or has a few weak spots you should pay attention to. Maybe you need to add another product to your setup? Or maybe you just need a complete change? This report will help you make that decision.
If you spot a detail in this report that you don’t understand, or would like to discuss, please contact us via our Twitter or Facebook accounts.
SE Labs uses current threat intelligence to make our tests as realistic as possible. To learn more about how we test, how we define ‘threat intelligence’ and how we use it to improve our tests please visit our website and follow us on Twitter.
This test report was funded by post-test consultation services provided by SE Labs to security vendors. Vendors of all products included in this report were able to request early access to results and the ability to dispute details for free. SE Labs has submitted the testing process behind this report for compliance with the AMTSO Testing Protocol Standard v1.2. To verify its compliance please check the AMTSO reference link at the bottom of page three of this report or here.
UPDATE (3rd January 2020): The tests were found to be compliant with AMTSO’s Standard.
