IT Pro Ranking: Endpoint Antivirus/Anti-Malware
Our InformationWeek 2012 Antivirus and Anti-malware Vendor Evaluation Survey asked 386 IT professionals to gauge their impressions of AV/anti-malware vendors. We asked respondents to only rank vendors they’ve used or evaluated within the past 12 months. The core of our survey asked two sets of questions: one focused on overall vendor performance, including price, general performance and product reliability, and the other focused on product-specific features such as virus and malware detection and removal.
Our respondents rated nine vendors. Kaspersky Lab and Sophos earned the highest ranking for overall performance, closely followed by Avast Software and Malwarebytes. Note that only six percentage points separated the leaders from the last-place finisher, Trend Micro. Kaspersky and Sophos also took the top two spots for AV/anti-malware features. The spread was wider here, with 10 points separating first and last place. While smaller players took top honors, brand name vendors still dominate IT’s radar. When we asked respondents to select up to three vendors they use, or have used or evaluated in the past 12 months, 42% said Symantec and 36% said McAfee. Compare that to 10% of respondents who use or have used or evaluated Kaspersky. It’s clear that brand names resonate with IT, but there’s ample opportunity for smaller players to grab a bigger slice of the market. This report analyzes the survey results, provides some product evaluation and purchase advice, and highlight changes in the threat landscape in the ongoing arms race between cyber vandals and anti-malware developers. (R4130212)
Survey Name InformationWeek Analytics 2012 Antivirus and Anti-Malware Vendor Evaluation Survey
Survey Date December 2011
Region North America
Number of Respondents 386
Purpose To determine preference for vendors supplying endpoint antivirus and anti-malware software to enterprise IT organizations.
Table of Contents
3 Executive Summary
4 Protection From a Dirty Internet
6 Rating the Malware Fighters
12 The Evolution of AV
15 Technical Evaluation Criteria
19 The Burden of Choice
21 Appendix
24 Author's Bio
25 Research Synopsis
26 Related Reports
About the Author
Kurt Marko is an InformationWeek and Network Computing contributor and IT industry veteran, pursuing his passion for communications after a varied career that has spanned virtually the entire high-tech food chain from chips to systems. Upon graduating from Stanford University with a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering, Kurt spent several years as a semiconductor device physicist, doing process design, modeling and testing. He then joined AT&T Bell Laboratories as a memory chip designer and CAD and simulation developer.
Moving to Hewlett-Packard, Kurt started in the laser printer R&D lab doing electrophotography development, for which he earned a patent, but his love of computers eventually led him to join HP’s nascent technical IT group. He spent 15 years as an IT engineer and was a lead architect for several enterprisewide infrastructure projects at HP, including the Windows domain infrastructure, remote access service, Exchange e-mail infrastructure and managed Web services.
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