AV-Comparatives names Kaspersky as Product of the Year

Independent testing organization AV-Comparatives has released its Anti-Virus Comparative Summary Report 2013.

This rounds up the results of the company's tests carried out over the past year on 22 consumer antivirus and internet security products.

Kaspersky Internet Security gets the company's Product of the Year Award, with Bitdefender as runner up. Seven other products, including a free program from Avast, received "Top Rated" designations. The researchers found Kaspersky's interface easy to use and were impressed by its additional functionality including hybrid protection from the cloud as well as on the device itself.

The other top rated products came from Avast, Avira, Bitdefender, BullGuard, ESET, Fortinet and F-Secure. Emsisoft Antimalware is given special recognition for achieving the Silver Award in the Real-World Protection Test in only its first year of testing.

Although it picks out these products as winners the report advises buyers, "If you plan to buy an anti-virus program, please visit the vendor’s website and evaluate their software by downloading a trial version, as there are many features and important considerations (e.g. compatibility, graphical user interface, ease of use, price, support etc) that you should evaluate for yourself." A checklist of key features is included as a table in the report.

You can read the full report as a PDF on the AV-Comparatives website. This includes reviews of all the winners and breaks down the results by different categories including false positives, malware removal and system impact.