Trend Micro, a global leader in Internet content security which focuses on securing the exchange of digital information for businesses and consumers, has endorsed a new ‘Live Testing’ Methodology Programme Created by NSS Labs.

The new third party anti-malware testing methodology is better at reflecting today’s ‘real-world’ conditions says Trend Micro, instead of using so-called antiquated testing techniques that don’t test computers against the latest threats coming from the Internet.

And coming out with top scores in malware protection was Trend Micro which, they say, proves the advantages of its Smart Protection Network in unsponsored real world tests.

Raimund Genes, Chief Technical Officer of Trend Micro, was enthusiastic about NSS Labs:
“With its new approach to testing antivirus products, NSS Labs is providing two key metrics in addition to traditional threat detection rates: First, measurement of detection and blocking of threats based on their URL source; and second, measurement of the time delay between when a security vendor is first aware of a potential new threat and when protection from that threat is available at customer endpoints, the so-called ‘time-to-protect

“Trend Micro is pleased we performed well in these tests but, more importantly, we look forward to the advances in anti-malware product testing that better align third party testing with the actual security provided to the customers of these products. The focus of third party testing should be on protection for the customers, which extends far beyond simple detection.”

The testing was conducted on a group of industry consumer and corporate security products and it assessed their effectiveness against socially engineered hardware. The Trend Micro products tested included Trend Micro Internet Security for consumers and Trend Micro OfficeScan Client/Server Suite for enterprises. The tests were non-commissioned and no vendor sponsorship was involved; and all were independently conducted by NSS Labs.

Trend Micro got the best scores and this proves, say the company, that the cloud-client layered-protection approach powered by the Trend Micro Smart Protection Network infrastructure out-performs competing solutions and provides the best possible malware protection available.

Rick Moy, president of NSS Labs, weighed in with:
“In-the-cloud reputation systems boosted protection significantly on average and Trend Micro achieved the best download and execution protection. It became obvious from this test that Trend Micro has made considerable strides in adding cloud reputation-based protection to their arsenal.

“Trend Micro OfficeScan utilises standard client-server architecture. The management console was streamlined and intuitive. Office Scan was easy to use and had no issues during the course of our test. Protection was consistently excellent throughout testing.”

The consumer product from Trend micro racked up an over-time protection rating of 96.4%. This equates to stopping 91% of downloads it recognised as malicious and an additional 5.5% of malware after it was executed.

With Trend Micro at the top, other manufacturers came out as follows:

• Trend Micro (91.0%, 5.5%) 96.4%;
• Kaspersky (78.5%, 9.3% 87.8%;
• Norton (50.5%, 31.3%) 81.8%;
• McAfee (79.8%, 1.9%) 81.6%;
• Norman (66.3%, 14.9%) 81.2%;
• F-Secure (63.7%, 16.4%) 80.0%;
• AVG (65.0%, 8.3%) 73.3%;
• Panda (64.4%, 7.6%) 72.0%;
• ESET (65.4%, 2.5%) 67.9%.

Guest Article by Neil Camp