Study: Panda Security Malware Solution Most Effective Against Rootkits
Panda Security recently announced that the Company's anti-malware solutions offer the best protection against malware that uses rootkits, according to a new study by AV-Test.org, an independent anti-virus software testing authority.
The independent study tested several solutions created for Windows XP to determine which ones defend against rootkits created to hide malware. Panda ActiveScan, Panda Security's free online scanner, detected and eliminated 86 percent of the malware strains hidden by rootkits, beating online scanners such as Kaspersky Online Scanner and Trend Micro HouseCall. Panda Security recently released a new version (Panda ActiveScan 2.0) of this powerful online scanner.
The study also tested the effectiveness of consumer solutions from different vendors for Windows Vista. In this test, Panda Antivirus 2008, Panda Security's consumer solution, detected and successfully removed 100 percent of active and latent rootkits, ahead of solutions such as Kaspersky Anti-Virus and McAfee VirusScan 2008.
Rootkits are programs designed to hide files, processes or registry entries. Although rootkits are not malicious themselves, cyber-criminals frequently use them to hide malicious code. Stealth techniques using rootkits prevent many traditional anti-virus solutions from detecting all malware present on computers. Consequently, many users could be infected without knowing. According to a study conducted by Panda Security, 23 percent of home computers with updated anti-virus protection are infected unknowingly (http://www.infectedornot.com).
"New security solutions need advanced heuristic and behavior analysis
features as well as tools that search deep inside the operating system. Otherwise, they won't be protecting users properly," explains Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs.
Panda Security's solutions are based on Collective Intelligence, an innovative protection system to combat the exponential growth of malware. Collective Intelligence is an online, automatic threat management system based on leveraging the knowledge gathered from the user community and other sources by Panda, and correlating and delivering the knowledge from the company's infrastructure. Panda Security's Collective Intelligence
network is comprised of 4 million computers. The knowledge accumulated in the system contains 11 million malware samples and over 100 million analyzed programs.