The German AV-Test.org has tested 25 consumer virus-scanners and Internet Security Suites for Windows 8.1. Only one of the products achieved a perfect score. The testers focused on 'real world' scenarios like protection, usability and performance.
The testers used Windows Defender as baseline for the test which achieved no points for protection, five points for performance and six points for usability. To score the protection of the software the testers checked how well the software performed against zero-day malware and detection of malware released in the last month.
To test performance of the software the testers measured the impact on the performance of the computer while visiting websites and while downloading, installing and executing software. Also performance when copying data was measured.
Usability was tested by checking how often the software reported false positives.
Kaspersky Internet Security 2014 was the only software that scored 18 out of 18 possible points. Qihoo, McAfee, Bitdefender and Avira follow with 17.5 points. The score of Chinese Qihoo 360 Internet Security is interesting as the software is the only high scoring free software. Earlier we reported that the European CyberCrime Centre recommends paid software, as free antivirus software would not be sufficient.
The testers found that AhnLab, Microsoft Windows Defender and PCKeeper were the lowest performing anti-virus applications for Windows 8.1. Both Ahnlab and Windows Defender scored zero points for detection of malware. The latter did score very well on usability and performance but that doesn't weigh up to no points for protection.
