Endpoint Security (EPS): Home 2022 Q3

How hard should a security test be?

Thank you for opening this report. I hope you’ll be able to use it to get a better idea about which home anti-virus products you might want to buy (or get rid of!).

Our reports help you choose the best SMB anti-malware product that can protect you from ransomware and other types of attack.

Home Anti-Virus Testing

The report starts off with a list of products, each of which win impressive-looking awards. But have you considered what those awards mean? How come there aren’t any massive losers in the list? How hard is this security test anyway?

Baseline Testing

There are lots of ways you can test products. You could prod a teddy bear and say, “well, that looks good enough,” or you could take it to pieces and analyse every component forensically for build and functional quality. “This toy looks safe, its parts are large, soft and non-toxic, and we can’t burn it easily. Plus, it’s got big, cute eyes.” This could be a baseline for cuddly toys: SAFE, with cuteness as an extra bonus.

For anti-malware products we have to consider a few different things, including the following:

• Is it really an anti-malware product? Is it at least basically functional?
• Can it determine a good quantity of common malware, without blocking lots of useful software?
• Can it stop the malware, as well as simply detecting it?