With all the NSA, Edward Snowden, and Heartbleed stories in the news, security is arguably the tech story of the year. But while these big glitzy stories are grabbing most of the attention, the most important thing you, the consumer, can do, is to perform the decidedly unglamorous but vital task of securing your own machines. And that means antivirus. All the big players have got 2014 edition products out, and some are even starting to ship 2015 editions! Many of the latest versions have morphed their appearance to match the Windows 8 style, tile-based and touch-friendly. Others remain unchanged, perhaps hoping to attract users by keeping the same familiar face.
Whether they look the same or not, most of the same products retain their positions at the top of the heap. Here are the best from the current crop of antivirus products.
| Name | Webroot SecureAnywhere AntiVirus (2014) | Norton AntiVirus (2014) | Bitdefender Antivirus Plus (2014) | McAfee AntiVirus Plus 2014 | Kaspersky Anti-Virus (2014) |
 |  |  |  |  | |
| Editor Rating | |||||
| Lowest Price | $19.99Webroot | $49.99Norton | $39.95BitDefender | $22.49McAfee | $34.99B&H Photo-Video |
| Type | Business, Personal, Professional | Business, Personal, Professional | Business, Personal, Professional | Business, Personal, Professional | Personal, Professional |
| OS Compatibility | Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS, Windows 7, Windows 8 | Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8 | Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8 | Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8 | Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8 |
Independent Lab Tests
I spend hours or days with every product performing hands-on testing, but the independent antivirus labs have whole squads of researchers for even more in-depth testing. I follow a half-dozen labs that perform ongoing tests and that make their results public: AV-Test, AV-Comparatives, Dennis Technology Labs, ICSA Labs, Virus Bulletin, and West Coast Labs.
I spend hours or days with every product performing hands-on testing, but the independent antivirus labs have whole squads of researchers for even more in-depth testing. I follow a half-dozen labs that perform ongoing tests and that make their results public: AV-Test, AV-Comparatives, Dennis Technology Labs, ICSA Labs, Virus Bulletin, and West Coast Labs.
I take independent testing quite seriously, and I recently worked up a new system to evaluate each product in light of its lab results. I've identified five important categories: detection, cleaning, protection, false positives, and performance. When there's enough data from the labs, I use it to calculate a star rating in each category, and an overall rating.
As you can see in the chart below, Kaspersky and Bitdefender get really excellent scores across the board. That's certainly a good sign. Note that while Microsoft Security Essentials appears in the chart, most of the labs treat it as a baseline, not as a serious contender. Microsoft agrees; they're not trying to compete with the third-party vendors. They just want to make sure everyone has some degree of protection.
Even the independent labs don't have unlimited resources, so there's a dearth of results for some products. I'll be talking with some of the more flexible labs about the possibility of expanding the collection of products they test.
The cloud-based behavioral monitoring of Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus (2014)$19.99 at Webroot is wildly different from almost any other product, and it's just not compatible with many test setups. As a result, it hardly gets tested at all. That's a shame, because it's amazingly tiny and scans amazingly fast.
For a detailed description of the lab tests that I follow and of the way I summarize them into a chart like the one below, please see How We Interpret Antivirus Lab Tests.
The Best Antivirus Lab Results Chart
Hands-On Testing
For every antivirus review, I run a hands-on test of the product's ability to detect and prevent malware attacks. I also check each product's ability to detect and prevent download of the very latest malware. Starting with a feed of links from London-based MRG-Effitas, I sift out those that point directly to a malicious executable online. Using executable file links makes it easy for me to measure success. If a malicious download reaches the desktop, the antivirus failed. If it wipes out the file during download, or blocks access to the URL completely, it succeeded.
For every antivirus review, I run a hands-on test of the product's ability to detect and prevent malware attacks. I also check each product's ability to detect and prevent download of the very latest malware. Starting with a feed of links from London-based MRG-Effitas, I sift out those that point directly to a malicious executable online. Using executable file links makes it easy for me to measure success. If a malicious download reaches the desktop, the antivirus failed. If it wipes out the file during download, or blocks access to the URL completely, it succeeded.
The links I use are never more than a day old, sometimes just hours old. That means each product hits a different set of links, but in every case they're extremely recent. I do plug away until I've tested about 100 links, figuring the daily differences will average out. This is definitely more real-world than my standard malware blocking test, which necessarily uses the same samples for as much as a year.
I've been running this test since November, and found a very wide range of scores. avast! Free Antivirus 2014 detected 79 percent of over 100 malicious URLs, blocking access to most at the URL level. At the other end of the spectrum are Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Premium 2.0 and Outpost Antivirus Pro 9.0. Malwarebytes blocked just 14 percent, a little over half at the URL level. Outpost didn't block any malicious URLs but wiped out 8 percent of the malicious executables during the download process.
Malware blocking chart
In the past I've run tests evaluating how well products clean up systems infested with live, active malware. An incident with GameOver Zeus co-opting my test systems for its own dastardly purposes convinced me that this kind of testing isn't as safe as it once was. I can't in good conscience keep running a test that might cause harm outside my testbed, so I'll be relying more on the independent labs. I will, of course, continue to explore and report on the tools and services that each vendor offers to handle malware that prevents antivirus installation, or subverts the scanning process.
The Best Products
The antivirus field is huge; I currently track over 45 products. In a field that big there's room for multiple products to earn the title of Editors' Choice.
The antivirus field is huge; I currently track over 45 products. In a field that big there's room for multiple products to earn the title of Editors' Choice.
Three products share the Editor's Choice honor for best overall antivirus:Bitdefender Antivirus Plus (2014)$39.95 at BitDefender, Norton AntiVirus (2014)$49.99 at Norton, and Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus (2014)$19.99 at Webroot. With its impressive sweep of the independent labs, Kaspersky Anti-Virus (2014)$34.99 at B&H Photo-Video is another very good choice.
AVG AntiVirus FREE 2014 is our current Editors' Choice for free antivirus. It shares the top score in my hands-on malware blocking test with four others, among them Avira Free AntiVirus (2014) and FortiClient 5.0 (also free). If you can't even get antivirus installed, give Malwarebytes Anti-Malware 2.0 a try. It's our Editors' Choice for free, cleanup-only antivirus.
Whatever your antivirus needs, one of the more than forty tools listed here should do the job.
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