AV-Comparatives have, until recently, been a site I trust.
I’ve referred you good readers to them before as a place of independence.
But today, IMO, they’ve blown that trust.
In their words:
At the end of every year, AV-Comparatives releases a summary report to comment on the various Anti-Virus products tested over the year, and to determine the winners in the various tests.
All sounds good so far – but last year, 2009, they awarded “AV Product of the year” to Symantec.
What?
How on earth can the widely recognised bloat that is Symantec beat the likes of Kaspersky (2nd) or Nod32 (3rd) as two examples I do trust? OK, so no one company will get it right 100% of the time for 100% of the people, but day in day out Symantec AV software has shown to be problematical, slow and notoriously unfriendly to systems. And woe betide you if you want to remove it.
Take a look at the summary report on which they base their award. On the surface and just looking at the chart you’d be inclined to agree – and let’s face it; not many of us dig into the meat of reports like this. But I do and I did and it makes for far more revealing reading than the headline – AV Product of the Year. After all, will Symantec care that in the details they state “being recognised as “Best Product of 2009″ does not mean that a product is the “best” (underline emphasis mine) – ah right, so now the truth comes out.
So, explain it to me. How can you on the one hand award a best of and then on the other say it isn’t necessarily the best?
Either it is or isn’t.
As I said, Symantec won’t care as they’ll just use the headline.
Oh and you get all this at twice the price of the other two I mention. Go figure.
- Do you agree with me on trust?
- What about in this particular instance – should I just shrug my shoulders?
- Has any security company lost yoru trust?
