I have been following Avast updates and have noticed they contain much less detections than some of the other companys. For example, Company “A” released around 800 new detections today where as Avast has released say 35. Any thoughts?
my work computer update today: Update 1214: Total new items binary & macro : 9282
I think the most i have seen is over 35000
I was going by the VPS listed on the site. Maybe the listing is a partial of the update detections.
I am no virus ekspert so i dont no if the lists can be compared and Avast is always high in virus detection test`s so…
Here is the update from Norman
http://www.norman.com/security_center/latest_virus_definition_file_published/69002/en
Oh, you was speaking of Norman. I was talking about Avast’s updates.
I think that it isn’t really that useful/easy to accurately compare definitions, as each company will have their own way of making definitions, so they can’t really be directly compared…
it is simply a numbers game…
When this same trend occurs for weeks at a time I would say that it says something. If company A puts out 120 new protections in a week and company B puts out 950 I would say thats pretty definitive unless I am missing something. I could be completely off the mark with this, but on the surface its hard to dispute the numbers.
I suspect part of the “problem” relates to the naming convention, or more properly, the lack of one, for the purpose of determining how many different viruses and other malware items you’re protected against. As has been pointed out a number of times (particularly in regard to comparative testing), there’s considerable variation between vendors as to whether minor differences are counted as a single virus or as separate ones.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if the same (or a highly analogous) situation exists with counting the number of definitions in your protection.