AV-Comparatives Names F-Secure as Antivirus Product of 2010

This week independent computer security testing organization AV-Comparatives named F-Secure as its product of the year for 2010. AV-Comparatives notes that being the overall best product of the year does not mean that a product is the best product for all users in all scenarios. What it means is that the product has receive the highest ratings in several tests, including malware protection, false positive rates and impact on performance. F-Secure and AVIRA were the only two products to receive an “Advanced+” rating for all seven of AV-Comparatives’ tests in 2010. AVIRA was a close runner-up for product of the year.

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F-Secure won the Gold award for the low false positives and a Gold award for Whole-Product Dynamic Protection. It was the joint-winner of the Gold Award for Whole-Product Dynamic Protection with Symantec. But F-Secure had a slight edge since unlike Symantec, no user-interaction was required to achieve its scores – everything worked well for AV-Comparatives right out of the box. As F-Secure explains on its blog: “We blocked 1946 of the tested files while Symantec blocked 1936. However, Symantec additionally prompted the user for his opinion on 19 files. They received half a point each for those.”

Symantec won best product in 2009 and AVIRA won in 2008.

F-Secure is based in Helsinki, Finland and was founded in 1988. It offers a business suite solution as well as personal solutions. F-Secure Internet Security versions 2010 and 2011 received favorable rankings from AV-Test in its Q3 2010 report. F-Secure did not receive a “Caution” rating in NSS Labs’ most recent report, but we can’t disclose any other information about F-Secure’s ranking in that test.

Last year was a watershed year for antivirus testing. We reported on the changing state of the field last summer. AV-Comparatives’ founder Peter Stelzhammer spoke on the panel “Measuring The Actual Security Anti-Virus Products Provide Customers” in May at the Source conference in Boston. You can watch a video of the panel below:

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