free Firewall s/w & test site suggestion for your AV s/w page

Chipping

Suggestion for the Free Anti-Virus & Safety Software page (moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/free-anti-virus-software)

You list Sunbelt Firewall and Comodo as free PC firewalls. I suggest you also add Online Armor (tallemu.com) and give Sunbelt less prominence (see why below).

Also, maybe you can add a link to a site that tests firewalls so Money Savers can compare for themselves:
matousec.com/projects/proactive-security-challenge/results.php

This shows Online Armor (I have used it - its good, v.low resource use) and Comodo both being excellent, even better than McAfee and Norton, and Sunbelt as being poor.

:A

Chipping

Here's a post of mine that gives more detail on this subject (copied below):
(http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1959167#48)

24-09-2009, 12:46 AM #48
Chipping
Security Product Comparison Sites

Its a long post but here I've tried to simplify the results of the various comparison sites to help readers, because it takes time to go through the sites to understand them. Please don't interrogate me about the 'results' I've put here - they are gross simplifications so are not fully accurate but they do (I believe) give a general idea of the results from the web sites. If you have time, go to the sites and judge for yourself.

Also note, the sites here test either firewalls or anti-virus - most of the popular products, such as Norton and Kaspersky, supply a suite of security programs that include both a firewall and anti-virus.


https://www.av-comparatives.org
This site regularly tests ANTI_VIRUS products for security, mistakes, and scanning speed (it was already mentioned by MoneySaver 'iviv').
summary-reports, main-tests, performance-tests

There are a lot of things tested here - its not just about detecting malware, e.g. how many times falsely identified malware (false positives) - which is a big security problem because users will start ignoring genuine alerts if there are too many.

They test every quarter and the summary results show their product of the year at the end of every year. Here are the winners: 2008 Avira, 2007 ESET, 2006 ESET, 2005 Kaspersky, 2004 Kaspersky. In 2009 its looking like ESET again, however, Kaspersky & Norton are close, Avira having fallen behind.

I've done a quick & nasty (& v.oversimplified) analysis & ranking of some of the products (selected as they are popular or stand out or are mentioned in this thread) as follows (1, 2 & 3 points allocated to 'standard', 'advanced' & 'advanced+' ratings and points added together for the 2 year rankings):

2009: 1. ESET, 2. Kaspersky/Norton, 3. McAfee, 4. Avast!/Avira/F-Secure, 5. Microsoft, 6. AVG
2009+2008: 1. ESET, 2. Avira/Kaspersky/Norton, 3. Avast!/McAfee, 4. AVG, 5. Microsoft, 6. F-Secure


https://www.matousec.com
This site regularly tests how secure FIREWALLS are and publishes the overall result in a nice table: products-ratings

The results are interesting: of the ones relevant to this thread Kaspersky is great (96%), Norton is so-so (66%) and not recommended. ESET, McAfee, Avira, F-Secure, and a load of others are 10% or below. Interestingly, Online Armor, Comodo, Outpost and PCTools *all free* are all at the top with 92% to 99% and rated 'excellent'.


https://www.passmark.com
This site tests the speed only of some functions of some ANTI-VIRUS products (as already mentioned by 'emmalj').

Here is their ranking (done Sep/09):
1. Norton (146), 2. ESET (131), 3. Kaspersky (119), 4. G Data (110), 5. SourceNext (101), 6. AVG (90), 7. Panda (89), 8. Trend Micro (77), 9. McAfee (69), 10. F-Secure (65).

These results, although showing the latest Norton to be quick, only show that it is quick for a subset (a large subset) of functions. They also show that there's very little difference in overall speed between Norton, ESET and Kaspersky. Functions, such as, slowing down of sending/receiving email, memory hogging during scanning, and slowness of shutting the PC down, have not been measured. In addition, the relative performance may be different on single processor PCs and PCs running something other than Windows Vista.

In the Passmark results a whole bunch of products (as per other sites above) have not been included, so these results are of limited usefulness to Moneysavers.


My opinon for 2009 products based on the above:
For anti-virus there does not seem to be much in it between ESET, Kaspersky and Norton.

For firewalls only Kaspersky and some of the free ones seem to stand up to the task, all the others are not recommended.

For speed, its anyone's guess. The one test above shows Norton, ESET and Kaspersky again being similar, however, there could be quicker products from the many that were not tested. I've use the FREE Online Armor firewall and Avast! anti-virus on a resource limited laptop and they appear quick (un-intrusive).

Final verdict seems to be any of: Kaspersky suite, ESET AV + top firewall, Norton AV + top firewall, or to save money Avast! AV + free top firewall. Top or free top firewall here being Online Armor, Comodo, PCTools or Outpost. I know Comodo throws up a lot of warnings initially that might annoy some users.