In my job at SophosLabs, where I’m in charge of working with the independent testers who examine and rate our security products, I deal with a lot of statistics. Here are a few numbers that make me especially proud of the work we do.
Out of roughly 25 Android security applications tested throughout 2015 by AV-Test, only one achieved a perfect 100% protection score for the whole year, across six tests in all – Sophos Mobile Security.
In recognition of our perfect protection scores, AV-Test has given us its Best Protection Award for Android Security at the 2015 AV-Test Awards.
It’s quite an accomplishment when you consider how many malicious Android apps we were asked to protect against – a total of 29,030 samples for the year, all of which we detected and blocked.
To be clear, AV-Test’s overall ratings of Android security products measure protection on a scale of 6 points, and in each test there may be several vendors with a “perfect score” of 6 out of 6. A vendor can miss some malware samples and still score 6 out of 6 points with a less than 100% protection rate. Sophos is the only vendor to detect and protect against 100% of the malware samples in every test in 2015.
In fact, our streak of perfect 100% Android malware protection goes back to September 2014, and it continues through the first test of this year in January 2016 – that’s nine tests in a row with a perfect 100% protection rate, which no other vendor can claim.
SophosLabs engineers work tirelessly to improve our protection through various means. We also work hand-in-hand with AV-Test to improve testing methodology to reflect how security apps perform in the real world.
AV-Test updated their test methodology in the summer of 2015 with the addition of a real-time, on-access malware test. This on-access test measures proactive detection of the latest Android zero-day threats in real time.
We think the new test paints a more accurate picture of how security apps perform in the real world, and although the tests are more rigorous now, we’ve still maintained our perfect scores.
SophosLabs has put in a lot of hard work to improve our protection, so it’s great to have an independent tester validate our efforts and be rewarded with outstanding test results.
Why you should try Sophos Mobile Security
Sophos Mobile Security for Android is a free app available from Google Play. It’s designed to protect Android devices from malicious apps, websites and text messages, using up-to-the-minute threat intelligence from SophosLabs, all without hurting performance or battery life.
Sophos Mobile Security is much more than an antivirus tool. If your Android device is lost or stolen, you can quickly lock or wipe the device with a simple text message. It also has a privacy advisor to show you which apps may be accessing your private information, so you can make an informed choice about permitting those apps to access your personal data.
The app can be managed via Sophos Mobile Control within a business environment. Earlier this month, we announced the availability of Sophos Mobile Control 6.0, a comprehensive enterprise mobility management solution. This latest version now includes Sophos Secure Email, a container solution that isolates business data from personal information on devices.
Learn all about Sophos Mobile Control at sophos.com/mobile.
You can also check out Sophos Mobile Security along with the full range of free tools from Sophos at sophos.com/forfree.
Above: Ferenc László Nagy, SophosLabs Senior Threat Researcher (middle), and Guy Roberts, Director of Systems Development at SophosLabs (right), receiving the AV-Test award. Congratulations on a job well done guys!
Image of Android robot courtesy of Flickr user JD Hancock (Creative Commons license).
