Free Antivirus Help Blog

Introduction:

        G-Data Antivirus is a new security product just released in the United States.   The software has garnered a significant amount of attention because of the high detection rates.   In fact, it was one of the best antivirus that PC magazine has ever tested due to it's detection accuracy.  We now take a closer look at G-Data’s antivirus technology.
        One of the first features that stands out with G-Data Antivirus, is that the software utilizes two scanning engines rather than one.  This theoretically allows the antivirus to have higher virus detection rates but also comes with some performance problems (read more below.) G-Data utilizes Bitdefender’s and Avast’s scanning engines simultaneously.  Bitdefender and Avast are well renowned and have some of the highest individual detections rates at 97% and 98% respectively.

Virus Detection Performance:

       As stated last week on how to compare antivirus, G-Data has all of the premier security lab’s certifications.  They include West Coast Labs, ICSA, and Virus Bulletin certified.   In the main antivirus comparison test, AV comparatives, G-Data scored an advanced + rating (the highest rating.) G-Data had an amazing 99.8% accuracy which exceeded all of the other mainstream antivirus products tested.  Not bad for an antivirus that has just become available to the U.S. market.
       I have heard conflicting reports based about G-Data’s false positive rate. Some users have said that there have been false positives.  However, according to the latest antivirus test, G-Data exceled with the least amount of false positives detected.

G-Data's Drawbacks:

       One thing were G-Data fails to perform on, is it’s slower scanning speed.  The software only scanned files for viruses at 8 megabytes per second.  This is about half of what G-Data’s competitors' Avast and Symantec achieved at around 18 megabytes per second.  G-Data states on their website that they have now incorporated multi cpu core scanning (called ParallelScan) in their 2010 version.  However, the improvement has been small even with a dual core processor. Multithreading scanning only reaches about 10 megabyte per second in real world uses.
       In addition to the slower scanning, G-Data also tends to be a resource hog.  The program uses significantly more memory than competing antivirus products.  A lot of users complain that they have trouble running the software on computers with less than 512 megabytes of ram.  Users have reported that the antivirus can sometimes use upwards of 300 MB of memory.  Therefore, G-Data antivirus 2010 should probably on be used on more powerful systems with at least 1 GB of Ram.

Lackluster Product Support: 

       The final problem seems to be product support.  Since the company is in Germany, a lot of users are having problems talking to support agents. Novice users should probably stay with an antivirus that is a little more user friendly.

Conclusion:

       G-data is probably best suited for the security nerd and not the average user.  I say this because the program requirements are too high for the mainstream system and there isn’t sufficient product support.  The program will need some more refining before it can enter the typical computer user’s household.  However, if you want the best antivirus detection available check out G-data. Download G-Data from the company's website here.

Free Antivirus Reviews g-data, av-comparatives, multi threading, antivirus,

     I have heard this line many times before. Is Norton better than McAfee? Is Kaspersky better than Avast? What is the best antivirus? Thankfully there are many ways to validate how an antivirus stacks up against their competitors.

      The first way is to find one of the many antivirus comparison companies and view their reports. One of my favorite is av-comparatives.org . You can view their latest report here. The company basically takes all of the well known antivirus software and runs a battery of tests on them. They use approximately 2,309,850 viruses on their test machines. They then rank each antivirus performance according to a battery of malware including backdoors, viruses, bots, and Trojans etc. The company then takes scanning times (Winners: ranked left to right, Avast, Symantec, Avira, and Sophos.), Detection Rates (Avira McAfee, Symantec, Avast then F-Secure 99.5% through 97.5%) and Missed Samples (Avira, McAfee, Symantec , and then Avast lower is better). Finally they assign an overall score with Avast, Symantec Norton, and Bitdefender ranked the highest.  McAfee is ranked in a tier below the following antiviruses. There are also four levels of certification with the av comparatives rankings depending on effectiveness.

    There are also other ranking services including WestCoast labs. This laboratory again tests an assortment of antivirus variables. Unfortunately, the company only provides two certifications platinum or a regular certification. So, Antivirus software either has a certification or it doesn’t as the company doesn’t rank antivirus software. However, it’s still good to check for WestCoast labs certified antivirus.

     Next, is ICSA labs. I like ICSA labs because they not only test antivirus but antispyware and anti spam as well. I believe that ICSA labs is one of the original malware testing services so I presume them to also have the most experience. However, the company like Westcoast labs only provides a certification rather than a ranking.

     Finally is Virus Bulletin. VB is the same as the last 2 certification companies in that they only provides a single Vb100 certification. This Vb100 certification means that the antivirus product detected 100 percent of viruses in the wild. Only 15 of the 26 security products that they tested passed. However, according to Av-comparatives no antivirus scored 100 percent detection.

      Some things that virus testing services don’t tell you. The first thing is the virus testing or comparative labs do not usually test free antivirus products. Free antivirus usually have modified code or scaled down functionality from the full versions. Therefore, you can’t say that full antivirus software and a free antivirus software detection rates are even close to similar. This is unfortunate because most antivirus these days are free antivirus. Just do a quick Google search for “antivirus” and the first program is free avg. However, don’t be discouraged. Check out av-comparatives and then make sure the software also has certifications on the other three sites listed above. This should answer most users’ questions about what is the best antivirus or what antivirus is better?

Antivirus News westcoast labs, icsa labs, av-comparatives, certifications, vb100