Everyone tells you that you need it, but which one?

Which home anti-virus is best? Our reports help you choose the home anti-malware product that can protect you from ransomware and other types of attack.

Choose the best home anti-malware solution

Classic cybersecurity advice always includes a plea to, “install anti-virus” or “use endpoint protection software”. Journalists, bloggers and even governments hand this information out, as if it helps. Most platforms, including Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS, include anti-virus so the question then becomes, “which anti-virus?”

How do you choose?

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) provides some mature and detailed advice but stops short of helping readers work out which products might be most suitable. The only time it tries to help in this respect ends in a bizarre suggestion that you might prefer a product that implements the Anti-Malware Scan Interface (AMSI). This feature is only relevant if you are developing security software yourself.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in the US gives advice on stopping ransomware. At the bottom of the list, including useful items such as, “update and patch” and “keep your personal information safe” is the instruction to, “install antivirus software, firewalls and email filters.” Nowhere does any such organisation help you choose which is the best or most appropriate for your organisation.

When you search for, “best home anti-virus” you’ll see millions of links to better or lesser-known magazine websites and slightly shady reseller’s blogs. Some of the most respectable technical websites run sensible and unbiased reviews and there’s where you start to get somewhere: opinions on interfaces and prices. But how effective are these products?

Find the best reviews

The best reviewers delegate the really technical business of testing endpoint security to the professional testers. If you read their reviews you’ll see our name in there somewhere.

This is because organisations such as SE Labs spend all of their time testing security products – it’s what we specialise in. In our case we learn how the criminals behave and then copy them closely. This produces the most realistic results you can hope to see in a public security test. We also ensure that our reports are reviewed by the Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization (AMTSO) to validate that we’ve tested fairly.

We pride ourselves on a level of transparency that elevates our work above the less open reports available. But don’t just take our word for it. This report has gone through the AMTSO certification process to ensure that we say what we’re going to do; do it; and can prove it. Our results help vendors improve their products and buyers choose the best for their own needs.

Read this SE Labs assessment of world-leading endpoint security products and discover how they handle well-known threats and targeted attacks.

Choose the best home security product

By understanding the rules of security testing

Our reports help you choose the best home security product that can protect you from ransomware and other types of attack.

Choose the best home anti-malware solution

This report contains security testing results. You can compare the performance of a variety of products that claim to protect you against online threats. This, in theory, will help people choose the best security product.

But this is a free report. How can you trust that the high-scoring vendors didn’t just pay for their ranking? Do you suspect that some low-scoring vendors dropped out of the report? Or asked to be retested until they scored better?

What are the rules behind the scenes in security testing?

With security testing the stakes are high. From a customers’ perspective, the wrong decision could be disastrous to a personal life.

So we, as testers, have a massive responsibility to do the right thing. That means the honest thing. We need to involve as many reputable security vendors as possible in our tests. And treat them all fairly.

Security vendors want to sell products and will do what they can to achieved strong marketing. That can involve appearing in weak tests or engaging with more ‘flexible’ testers. One strategy could be to test enough privately against competitors and then release the one report that shows your product at the top of the list.

We focus on strong technical testing and avoid purely marketing-led initiatives. We have awards for vendors who do well, but we stand out by assessing technology deeply and helping improve things for everyone.

Five simple rules

In our blog post Public and Private Testing we explain our five simple rules to help maintain the integrity of our reports. If you want to peak behind the curtain, to see how we work with security vendors, the information is all available online.

Testing Standards

For this report we also followed the only available Standard for anti-malware testing, the one run by the Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization. This ensures that we do what we say we’ll do, and can prove it.

We pride ourselves on a level of transparency that elevates our work above the less open reports available. But don’t just take our word for it. This report has gone through the AMTSO certification process to ensure that we say what we’re going to do; do it; and can prove it. Our results help vendors improve their products and buyers choose the best for their own needs.

Zero to Neo

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

Choose the best home anti-malware solution

There seems to be no limit to the powers of cyber criminals. In 2021 the public became aware of the advanced capabilities of the NSO group, now infamous for helping governments spy on dissidents and others.

The SolarWinds attack compromised some of the largest organisations in the world (and my implication, their customers – and so on, down the supply chain). And the US’ largest oil pipeline company was breached, and its systems held to ransom.

Most analyses of these incidents recognise that endpoint security was attacked. As we alluded to in our annual report this year, breaches are a process. The initial stages of these famous attacks may not have involved a Windows PC but if your organisation grinds to a halt because everyone’s laptop is showing a red warning and a Bitcoin demand then the endpoint was compromised at some point. It needs protection, regardless of other security layers in play.

We include targeted attacks in our endpoint protection tests because hackers can use a variety of techniques to attack endpoints. Not all targeted attacks are as sophisticated and focussed as the automatic iPhone exploits used by the NSO Group. Sometimes a targeted attack can be as simple as someone using a basic tool downloaded from the internet. Your adversary might be your neighbour, rather than a government-backed organisation. In fact, that’s possibly more likely.

Protection is expected

It doesn’t really matter who represents a threat to you: a resourceful cyber ninja or an idiot colleague. When you or your business buys an endpoint protection product you expect it to stop attacks, sophisticated or otherwise. When you read the results in this report, remember that all it takes is one successful attack to ruin your day or your company.

We pride ourselves on a level of transparency that elevates our work above the less open reports available. But don’t just take our word for it. This report has gone through the AMTSO certification process to ensure that we say what we’re going to do; do it; and can prove it. Our results help vendors improve their products and buyers choose the best for their own needs.

SE Labs Security Awards

Find out which products won in our annual awards

In this report, we reveal the SE Labs Security Awards for 2020-2021 and provide the latest security testing updates.

The third annual report from SE Labs charts the successes and failures of security companies, their customers and the criminals who keep relentless pressure on us all. Working from home is at its highest level in human history, which emphasises the need to secure all devices, everywhere.

Our annual awards recognise great performance in tests and in the real world.

Focus on endpoint protection results – 6 years of testing

After six solid years of testing endpoint protection we’ve produced a review that examines some of the trends and data points we’ve identified. How did your favourite anti-virus behave over the last few years?

What can we test, and how do we do it?

Meet the team behind SE Labs and find out which security solutions we test, and how we do it more realistically than anyone else.

Ransomware Protection Tested

Red screens means red faces. Prevent, don’t pay!

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

Choose the best home anti-malware solution

Ransomware is causing all the rage right now. It’s the type of threat that gets attention because a successful attack is extremely visible (the attacker needs you to know it’s worked, or you won’t pay!) Also, there is a direct and substantial cost attached to it. In addition to paying security specialists to help, there’s a fat ransom demand sitting on your screen.

While much hacking is subtle, stealing information silently, ransomware is in your face. It stops businesses in their tracks. It gets the attention of the finance directors. It provides powerful ammunition to security teams arguing for more resources. And, of course, it makes headlines.

Ransomware attacks used to be splashed around automatically. Anyone could be unlucky enough to click on the wrong link and face a red screen asking for a Bitcoin. And these ‘commodity’, untargeted ransomware attacks still exist. Some of the threats used in the making of this report are just such attacks.

We pride ourselves on a level of transparency that elevates our work above the less open reports available. But don’t just take our word for it. This report has gone through the AMTSO certification process to ensure that we say what we’re going to do; do it; and can prove it. Our results help vendors improve their products and buyers choose the best for their own needs.

Anti-virus needs your attention

How to get out more than you put in

Our reports help you choose the best home anti-malware solution. Picking a suitable solution isn’t just a matter of scanning through testing awards. You need to look closely at what you need, what you already have and what is available.

Choose the best home anti-malware solution

If you were going to buy a new security fence, burglar alarm or CCTV system you would research the various options and consider how to deploy it in your very specific situation. The same should follow for endpoint protection systems. What do you really need? Are the candidates basically capable? And can you get the best out of them in your environment.

For home users, a big question is: are you interested? Technically-minded folk may want powerful features that are irrelevant to people who just want to install something and forget about it. Or security experts might lock down their computers in clever ways and decide that basic anti-virus is good enough. When it comes to choosing personal security products, anti-virus needs your attention.

We hope this report helps you answer some of these important questions.

We pride ourselves on a level of transparency that elevates our work above the less open reports available. But don’t just take our word for it. This report has gone through the AMTSO certification process to ensure that we say what we’re going to do; do it; and can prove it. Our results help vendors improve their products and buyers choose the best for their own needs.

Read this SE Labs assessment of world-leading endpoint security products and discover how they handle well-known threats and targeted attacks.

Tested products from:

Avast
AVG
Avira
Kaspersky
McAfee
Microsoft
Norton LifeLock
Sophos
Webroot

How they sell security (and we buy it)

The world of cyber security sales is unclear at best

Our reports help you choose the best home anti-malware solution. This latest one looks at how the most popular products handle the threats everyone faces on a daily basis, as well as the sort of targeted attack you hope never to encounter (but might).

There aren’t many resources available to help make such buying decisions. Security marketing is fraught with misleading claims. That’s not just our opinion. “Snake oil” is a common refrain among attendees of security conferences and the large companies that buy security to the tune of over one trillion dollars a year.

Choose the best home anti-malware solution

SE Labs is particularly well connected in the security world. It’s partially how we have gained the trust of the security vendors themselves, and their own customers. We sit right in the middle of things, alongside the analysts who help businesses choose which vendors to work with. This is why your favourite reviewers use SE Labs lab data to help them with their anti-virus reviews and other security articles. Very few organisations get to see under the hood of personal security products. We’re here to help, and provide that insight.

We pride ourselves on a level of transparency that elevates our work above the less open reports available. But don’t just take our word for it. This report has gone through the AMTSO certification process to ensure that we say what we’re going to do; do it; and can prove it. Our results help vendors improve their products and buyers choose the best for their own needs.

Read this SE Labs assessment of world-leading endpoint security products and discover how they handle well-known threats and targeted attacks.

2020: year of the breach

Solid endpoint protection is a bare minimum

If it feels like new breaches are reported every week it’s because they are. Attackers are taking no prisoners and are successfully breaking into businesses, political organisations and systems belonging to individuals.

Backups are important but, they are not always the perfect solution. Recent attackers have been deleting backups and there are ways to damage offline backups held securely on tape, as we discussed in our article.

You can’t rely on just one type of security solution. However, having solid endpoint protection in place is one of a few bare-minimum measures you need to take. Most of the products in this security test report are excellent at providing a much-needed level of protection on personal and business computers.

We recommend you read through our test results in detail and consider how confident you are that your current choice will stand up against real-world security threats.

Hands up, who’s been hacked?

Get ahead in the game that never ends

Have you ever been hacked? You, personally, or your business? If your answer is, “no” it would be interesting to know how you can be so sure.

Keeping your wits about you is essential, but you can’t do it all on your own. That’s why a good (anti-malware) endpoint protection solution is an essential basis for your online protection. We hope this report helps you or your business get ahead in the game that never ends.

Read this SE Labs assessment of world-leading endpoint security products and discover how they handle well-known threats and targeted attacks.

In our second annual report we review the unprecedented year of 2020, announce our annual awards winners and discuss testing like hackers.

You can find out all about the exciting new Breach Response and Email Security Services Protection tests. And learn that even security testers can use machine learning to make testing better, while still testing like hackers.

We will explain who we work with, to try and improve everyone’s security in this time of uncertainty. We’ll also explore how security testing has improved (or not) over the last 12 months and suggest ways in which you can use us better to help you personally or your organisation.

Awards winners and testing like hackers

Our annual award winners announcement shows who has impressed us the most since our last annual report.

And if you are new to security testing, we explain what the full attack chain is, and why you should use it when assessing security products.