I was recently pointed to a comparative study of free antivirus solutions done by PC World and performed by AV-Test.org, comparing Panda Cloud Antivirus, Avira, avast!, Microsoft Security Essentials, AVG, Comodo, PC Tools, and ClamAV.
Altough the editorial did not include Panda Cloud Antivirus in the ranking chart as it could not test the retrospective detection using 2 and 4 week old signatures (as Panda Cloud Antivirus works in the cloud and therefore cannot use 2 & 4 week old signatures), it had this to say about Panda Cloud Antivirus:
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/product/290839/review/cloud_antivirus.html
Among all of the free antivirus software we tested for our latest roundup, Panda Cloud Antivirus was the best app at blocking known malware.
The approach is intended to take advantage of the latest signatures without the need for signature-database updates–and if its excellent showing at detecting malware in AV-Test.org’s zoo of half a million samples is any indication, the approach works. Panda’s app produced an impressive 99.4 percent overall detection rate.
For now, we can’t give Panda’s app a complete score, but its impressive ability to detect malware makes it well worth keeping an eye on.
The final detection rate ranking of the full collection of malware, taking into consideration updated sigs and products, is the following:
- Panda: 99.4%
- Avira: 98.9%
- Avast: 98.2%
- MSE: 97.8%
- AVG: 95.8%
- Comodo: 74.6%
This is great news and motivates us even more to continue working hard to release a 1.0 version that offers top detection and protection for free 🙂