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Excellent ranking for Outpost (2013/03/20 15:28)
For very long time it was only Comodo Internet Security that was able to reach the Excellent ranking in Proactive Security Challenge 64. Today, new Outpost Security Suite Pro version 8 joined Comodo in this category with 90% score. Congratulations and keep up the improving quality!
Thank You and Best Wishes (2012/12/31 19:30)
We would like to thank you, our visitors, for all the support you expressed to us in 2012. Thank you for all your kind emails you sent to us. We really appreciate that. We are happy that you like our work that is helping to improve the security of desktop computers all over the world.
We would also like to thank all our clients and partners and software vendors that do care about the real level of security that their products provide. Thank you for believing that honesty, customer's satisfaction and focus on the quality is the best long term marketing you can have.
To all our visitors, supporters, partners and clients: Have a successful year 2013!
Online Payments Threats 2 Comparative Testing (2012/12/07 08:40)
We have performed a second round of Online Payments Threats comparative testing. The first testing revealed that security unaware users using security products in their out-of-box configurations are, in most cases, not protected against malicious techniques of financial malware. This was the reason, together with the fact that several vendors have introduced new features to fight financial malware in their recently released solutions for the year 2013, why we have performed another similar comparative testing.
For the second round, we have used the same set of 15 tests, but we have made some significant changes to the testing methodology assuming much more security aware users to be the target consumers. We have tested 10 Windows desktop security products and it could be said that three products succeeded this time, namely avast! Internet Security 7, Bitdefender Internet Security 2013 and Kaspersky Internet Security 2013 performed well. On the other hand, five out of ten products failed complely.
See the complete report for more information about this testing.
New project – Online Domain Tools (2012/11/02 06:15)
We are pleased to announce the launch of our very new project – Online Domain Tools. Online Domain Tools was built on the idea of the Nmap Online service. When we reached 500,000 scans with Nmap Online we realized that we can offer more. We have extended the idea and implemented an extensive set of online tools. The project's main goal is to provide tools with higher quality and usability than other similar projects offer.
Nmap Online is now a part of Online Domain Tools, it is just one of many tools that you can use. Fans of Nmap Online may be interested to try Nping Online, website owners can try to evaluate their website's score with Webscore, everyone can try to check strength of their passwords with the Password Checker tool. Various domain tools are available too – try our Whois or Mail Server Blacklist Checker. And there are many more. It is a really wide range of useful tools for everyday use.
The Nmap Online service was intended mainly for network administrators. Online Domain Tools is intended for everyone. And this is also why we want all our tools to be as easy to use as possible. This is one of our priorities in this project. All tools are supported with full descriptions on how to use them and most of them contain one click examples. Each tool's description not only informs you how to use the tool on itself but also provides additional information that might help you understand how it works and what you can expect from it.
The service is free and can be used immediately, using most tools does not require any registration.
Product list improved (2012/10/04 07:27)
We have revised the Proactive Security Challenge 64 Product list. The list newly contains information about Windows 8 support. Some vendors announced the support of the latest Windows system already and you can easily identify these products in our list. We have also changed the status of several products that have been discontinued and we have completely removed products that were not intended for home users. A few products with unclear situation about their development status were left among live projects for later review.
Features of Modern Security Suites – Part 3 (2012/10/01 08:48)
The final part of the Features of Modern Security Suites series discusses Web and Browser Protection features and also briefly mentions several minor features of security suites, such as Parental Control, Anti-spam, Vulnerability Protection. The features listed in this part are usually not core parts of security products. Rarely you can find a product that implements all of them. Their implementations among various products differs a lot. This is why we try to cover just the basic principles and aspects that are common.
Continue to Features of Modern Security Suites – Part 3
Features of Modern Security Suites – Part 2 (2012/09/14 23:14)
The second part of the Features of Modern Security Suites series is devoted to Behavior Control features. Application behavior and its monitoring and controlling is a topic that is very close to us as it is also the primary focus of our public research as well as our commercial work for security software vendors. In this article we describe basic functionality of Behavior Control features and we enumerate common categories of application behavior that are being controlled by modern security suites.
Continue to Features of Modern Security Suites – Part 2
Features of Modern Security Suites (2012/08/28 08:12)
Today's desktop security products for Windows are very complex applications. For end-users, the number of offered proprietary features can be confusing. Each software vendor may use its own original names for the very same features that are available in other products under different names. The confusion might increase when we realize that it is not uncommon to see two different features having the same name in products of two different vendors.
This series of articles is intended to clarify the basics and the real functionality of the most common features of today's Windows desktop security suites. We are going to describe what can you expect from a product that, for example, implements
In the first part of the series, we will discuss two most common components – Anti-Virus Engine and Firewall.
Continue to Features of Modern Security Suites – Part 1
Privatefirewall Awarded (2012/08/07 09:30)
Privatefirewall is the third product to succeed in Proactive Security Challenge 64 by beating the 80% score limit. With its 88% from today's testing, Privatefirewall took the second place in our challenge, 6 % behind leading Comodo Internet Security Premium and 2 % ahead of the currently third Outpost Security Suite Pro. Congratulations Privatefirewall!
Proactive Security Challenge 64 now contains results of 33 different security products, many of which were tested more than once in different versions. Only 9 of them are not in the red zone, which means only 9 out of 33 products scored above 30 %.
Online Payments Threats Comparative Testing (2012/07/06 08:38)
We have been asked to design and perform a comparative testing focused on financial malware – i.e. malware created to steal credentials to online payment services. The task was assigned by Kaspersky Lab ZAO in order to test their new Safe Money technology, which is implemented in their upcoming Kaspersky Internet Security 2013. Besides Kaspersky Internet Security 2013 (RTM version) we have included 13 security products from different vendors in this testing. Except for Trusteer Rapport all products were general purpose anti-virus products and Internet security suites. With primary focus to common inexpert users, assuming no or low computer security awareness from the users, all products were tested in their out-of-box configurations.
We have designed 15 tests with ability to steal PayPal and eBay credentials. Each test exploited different attack vector to achieve its goal. The techniques of the tests were inspired by widespread real-life malware including Zeus, Sinowal, Silon, Cidox, SpyEye, Carberp, Yaludle, etc.
A half of the tested products did not prevented a single test to steal the credentials. Only two of the tested products passed all the tests – Kaspersky Internet Security 2013 and Trusteer Rapport.
See the complete report for more information about this testing.