In a recent anti-virus test,12 packages were tested against a range of up to date viruses with surprising results. The products were tested in two ways:

Firstly by using Outlook Express as an email client, and downloading 251 emails each with a different, real life virus. The number of viruses missed was then counted and a detection rate calculated. The best performing products .Kaspersky and Steganos. (essentially the same software) had a detection rate of over 90% Norton Antivirus had a detection rate of less than 75%.

Next 183 files containing malware, were downloaded via a web browser, the programs should detect these threats while downloading, but in addition after downloading a manual scan was done. The number of missed files was then counted, and the detection rate calculated. The results included files detected whislt downloading and detected by doing a system scan. Again Kaspersky and Steganos performed best detecting 72% of the threats. Norton detected only 27.9%.

The values from these two tests were then averaged to give overall scores which are shown below.   It should be noted that the viruses and threats used were the latest spreading threats on the internet, and it was essentially a pretty severe test, nevertheless its pretty shocking to see the market leading packages at the bottom of the list.   Steganos is exactly the same software as Kaspersky with some minor cosmetic changes. The fact that it performed slightly differently than Kaspersky was described in the test as 'an interesting anomaly' it one of its major attractions is the £12 per year renewal fee.  

Kaspersky Labs Anti-Virus6                                72.6%  
Steganos Anti-Virus 2007                                    71.2%  
Eset NOD32 2.7                                                    63.6%  
F-Secure Anti-Virus 2007                                    63.1%  
Grisoft AVG Anti-Virus Free 7.5                          59.2%  
Panda Anti-Virus 2007                                         56.2%  
Bullgaurd 7                                                            55.3%  
Symantec Norton Anti-Virus 2007                       54.8%  
Softwin BitDefender Anti-Virus 10                       53.7%  
McAffee VirusScan Plus 2007                             50.5%  
Trend Micro PC-cillin Internet security 2007         44.5%  
Alwil Avast 4.7 Home edition.                               44.0%