Westcon Says Kaspersky Still on Top

Independent research awards first place to Kaspersky Lab’s exploit prevention technology

According to Westcon Security, vendor partner Kaspersky Lab’s innovative Automatic Exploit Prevention technology, remains the best tool to protect users against the most dangerous threats as per independent research performed by the MRG Effitas testing lab.

The lab recently assessed 10 security solutions, which highlighted that Kaspersky Internet Security 2013 was the only one capable of successfully protecting a computer against all 13 simulations of highly dangerous prevalent exploits. According to the company the result offers a strong endorsement of Kaspersky Lab’s new Automatic Exploit Prevention technology, now available in Kaspersky Internet Security 2013.

“It is always a great pleasure to see that the vendors we support are doing so well in the industry, especially as the ultimate goal of the test, which was commissioned by Kaspersky Lab, was to evaluate how well security solutions could protect against exploits,” states Andrew Potgieter, business unit manager at Westcon Security.

As per the research experts at MRG Effitas used both common exploits that are known to be “in-the-wild” and artificial samples provided by the Metasploit project. In total 13 samples were selected, each being able to execute malicious code on an unprotected system. The samples were modified in order to avoid detection by traditional protection methods – being blocked by a signature or cloud-based service, detected with a web filtering module, etc.

During testing the experts at MRG Effitas conducted regular user tasks with infected objects, like opening a Word or PDF document, and viewing web pages or Flash animations. Thus, the real-life scenarios when users are attacked with new or unknown exploits were carefully simulated.

All security suites were tested with their default settings. To make use of cloud-based security services, an Internet connection was provided. Kaspersky Internet Security 2013 was evaluated in two different modes: one with all default settings and another using only Automatic Exploit Prevention technology to block exploits while all other protection technologies were disabled.

Whether in default mode or AEP-only mode, Kaspersky Internet Security was the only product capable of detecting and blocking all 13 exploits. The runner-up missed one exploit (using a vulnerability in the popular Winamp media player), and the product in third place missed two (vulnerabilities in Adobe Reader and Internet Explorer).

“The results speak for themselves and we are pleased to be endorsing a product that stands head and shoulders above its competitors,” ends Potgieter.

The full report can be read here: http://www.mrg-effitas.com/flash-test-default/