Protected and Approved with F-Secure

The independent IT security research company’s eye-of-the-needle process measured how well security applications performed in protecting devices from live virus infections.

F-Secure Computer Protection was amongst the products tested that achieved a level one rating – a distinction shared by only three other products during the tests.

“To pass this certification is a stamp of quality as all of MRG Effitas’ certifications test products to the most stringent assessment criteria that we are aware of in the industry”. Chris Pickard, CEO of MRG Effitas.

Level one ratings were only granted to software that could protect systems from all threats used in the tests (either before the initial infection or detection within 24 hours through behavior protection).

A pass at level two was granted to nine products. This grade was given to products that detected and remediated 98 percent of malware used in the tests (either before infection or on the first manual rescan).

Five products failed the test because they were unable to detect all infections and remediate the system during testing.

“Our key mission is to provide our customers with maximum protection from real-world cyber threats while offering them a smooth user experience. And this test result shows that our combination of security technologies like machine learning and behavior-based detections with innovations spearheaded by the hard work of our researchers and experts delivers the proactive protection that people and organizations need,” says F-Secure’s Kimmo Kasslin, Vice President of F-Secure Labs.

Four assessment categories were used. These were samples blocked or missed, ransomware blocked or missed, financial malware blocked or missed, and PUA adware blocked or missed.

MRG Effitas researchers installed a Windows 10 64-bit operating system on a virtual machine in order to carry out the test. They applied all updates, and third-party applications were both installed and updated.

The payloads consisted of 177 trojans, 65 backdoors, 67 financial malware samples, 16 ransomware samples, and 12 others.

Experts also tested the software products against 32 potentially unwanted applications (PUAs). Security experts generally consider a PUA to be unsuitable for business networks.

The respective results, together with the full study, can be read here.