avast! Free Antivirus outperformed multiple free and paid-for antivirus products in AV-TEST’s analysis of thirty-one consumer and business internet security products. The test, which concluded in June, included familiar names in the antivirus sector. Even a well-known paid-for ‘Internet Security 2012’ product which sells for $79.99 a year, was bested by AVAST Software’s free antivirus product.

Both home-user and corporate products analyzed by AV-Test.org cover a range of metrics, including protection against ‘real-world’ zero-day malware attacks, detection of a representative set of malware discovered in the last 2-3 months, false positive rates, and scanning speed. avast! Free Antivirus detected 100% of widespread and prevalent malware (such as viruses, worms or Trojan Horses), and its cumulative score earned it the top spot for overall performance among competitors.

AV-TEST uses specially developed processes to examine products in accordance with the high standards of the IT security field. The aim of the research work carried out by AV-TEST is to directly detect the latest malware, to analyze it using state-of-the-art methods and to inform consumers of the results obtained.

Avast! Free Antivirus 7 has the distinction of being the only free antivirus to receive the Advanced Plus certification rating from the annual “On-Demand Detection of Malicious Software” test from Anti-Virus Comparatives.

Approximately 300,000 pieces of malware were used in the testing, and avast! Free Antivirus 7 detected 98% of them; the highest detection rate of all tested free solutions which outperformed a number of paid-for products from other AV vendors. Complementing the high malware detection rate, avast! was also recognized for detecting few false positives during the test. The number of avast! false alarms was 14. The average was 48 false positives. Avast! Free Antivirus 7 is the only free antivirus to receive the Advanced Plus certification rating.

AV-Comparatives chooses which antivirus products are to be tested from a field of internationally well-known, up-to-date antivirus products. In order to ensure that test results give a complete and accurate picture of a product’s capabilities, AV-Comparatives has strict rules about which tests every product must take part in, and which tests are optional. A dynamic “real world” protection test is conducted which measures file-detection rates, the number of false positive alerts raised, as well as other tests that cover different features of the products.