Antivirus Software I Use is NOD32

How do you determine whether antivirus software works? The main purpose of antivirus software is to identify and block viruses and trojans that are circulating in the wild. It doesn't matter which virus software can recognize "the most" viruses, or whether it detects all viruses in a test collection consisting mostly of non-functional viruses, viruses that haven't been in circulation for years, or artifical viruses that were created solely for testing purposes. Neither does it matter how many copies the software has sold or how many companies are relying on its protection. Antivirus software only works if it can deal with real-life viruses that make their way into your inbox, your browser, or your network right now.


Virus Bulletin magazine is a technical journal on developments in the field of computer viruses and anti-virus products. VB test antivirus software on a monthly basis and awards products that that detect all "In the Wild" viruses during both on-demand and on-access scanning in certain Virus Bulletin tests with its VB100% award. More details on what this award is all about can be found at http://www.virusbtn.com/100/whatis.html


The WildList - http://www.virusbtn.com/WildLists/ - that is used to test the antivirus programs is a cumulative list of viruses that are active and in circulation as reported by 64 virus information professionals, therefore representing a real-world environment of virus threats that any antivirus program should be able to deal with effortlessly.


What's really interesting are the comparative results of the VB 100 tests as you can see at http://www.virusbtn.com/100/vb100sum.html. This statistic shows how many times an antivirus program was submitted for testing, how many times it succeeded to detect all "In the Wild" viruses during both on-demand and on-access scanning, and how many times it failed. To make the results easier to interpret, I created a small table with each program's stats, and calculated the success ratio of each software by figuring out the percentage of how much the program succeeded out of all the times it was tested. Check out the results:

It's interesting to see that not a single program was able to take care of all viruses any time it was tested. But the scary part is to see the success ratios of the programs tested. NOD32 stands out with a success ratio of 93%, failing only once in the 16 times it was tested, making it by far the most reliable antivirus software in this round-up. Other known software like PC-Cillin, AVG, Panda, McAfee, and InnoculateIT look pretty pathetic in comparison.
Of course this is only one possible test scenario of many, and it is not the ultimate test, but it is a very good and realistic representation and gives a good indication of antivirus software capabilities.

As far as virus detection is concerned, NOD32 so far has worked very well for me. All 3 components did reliably and consistently identify and block known viruses such as Sircam, Anset, and Badtrans, as well as the Eicar test virus that came in via Outlook 2000, were saved on my hard drive, or were attempted to be downloaded.

What is your opinion?