Sophos leads the pack as the only vendor with perfect scores in these two anti-malware tests

Sophos has just passed with flying colors two important anti-malware tests conducted by the independent tester Dennis Technology Labs – one for enterprise and another for small and mid-sized business (SMB) endpoint security products – earning the highest rating of “AAA” in both tests.

The tests looked at how the products from Sophos, McAfee, Microsoft, Kaspersky, Symantec and Trend Micro fared in real-world scenarios that replicate what a user would experience when encountering an infected website.

Sophos Endpoint Protection received perfect protection scores in both tests, and was the only product tested with a perfect total accuracy rating in the enterprise test. We also were the only vendor to receive a perfect score in both the enterprise and SMB tests.

In the enterprise test, Sophos Endpoint Protection blocked all threats without any compromises (protection), and it did so without any false positives for legitimate software (legitimacy), for a total accuracy score of 100%, as you can see in the chart below.

Although Kaspersky also received a 100% total accuracy score, when you dig down into the numbers you can see that only Sophos had a perfect total accuracy rating (1024 out of a possible 1024), whereas Kaspersky’s rating (1020 out of 1024) was rounded up to 100%.

Kaspersky lost points in the protection area because it failed to defend against three out of the 100 malware samples used in the test. Rather than blocking the malware from gaining a foothold in the target system, Kaspersky’s product “neutralized” the threats after they had already infected the system, as shown in the “protection details” table below.

Symantec, Trend Micro and Microsoft all suffered in their protection scores because at least one threat compromised the target system, meaning their products allowed the threat to infect the system and did not neutralize the threat after infection.

You’ll notice that, although McAfee successfully defended against all threats in the test, its score in legitimate software ratings was the lowest of all products tested because of false positives.

On the SMB test, Sophos Endpoint Protection once again achieved perfect scores for blocking all threats without blocking any legitimate software.

In this test, Symantec and Kaspersky also received 100% total accuracy scores, but Kaspersky only defended against 97 out of 100 threats – it neutralized three threats after they had infected the target system, as shown below.

Trend Micro and McAfee scored low in protection accuracy because of threats that compromised the target system. Both companies also scored low on the legitimacy portion of the test due to false positives, seen in the table below.

For organizations of any size, a product that defends against all threats but blocks legitimate software is disruptive to the business.

And of course, an anti-malware product that only blocks threats most of the time is not nearly good enough – letting just one threat through is all that an attacker needs to do serious damage to your business’s network, data and reputation.

As Dennis Technology Labs said in its report: “The ideal product would block all threats and allow all legitimate applications.”

As the only product with perfect protection scores and perfect legitimate software scores in both the enterprise and SMB tests, we agree.

These results are also gratifying because Dennis Technology Labs is one of very few testers that truly tests real-world threats in near real time from end to end, giving all layers of protection we have in our product an opportunity to protect the user at every stage of the attack lifecycle.

For more information on test methodology and the complete results, visit the Dennis Technology Labs website to download the full Enterprise Anti-Virus Protection and Small Business Anti-Virus Protection reports.

Sophos Endpoint Protection

In independent tests, Sophos Endpoint Protection regularly gets top scores for protection, usability and performance, validating of our leadership in the industry.

We’re continuing to innovate and build new protection technologies into our next-gen endpoint solution such as malicious traffic detection and download reputation. Plus, we’re integrating our endpoint and network security together with our industry-first synchronized security technology.

To see how Sophos Endpoint Protection is simply better than the competition, try it for yourself – sign up today for a free trial.