Fighting malware and spam

VB RAP test results

February 2009 saw the introduction of RAP testing to VB's VB100 comparative reviews, measuring products' reactive and proactive detection abilities against the most recent malware that has emerged around the world.

The results of the February 2009, April 2009 and June 2009 RAP tests are being made available to all registered users - in future tests, the results will only be viewable by Virus Bulletin subscribers. (Click here for subscription information.)

• The results of the June 2009 RAP tests (carried out on Windows Server 2003 x64 Enterprise Edition) can be viewed here.

• The results of the April 2009 RAP tests (carried out on Windows XP SP3) can be viewed here.

• The results of the February 2009 RAP tests (carried out on Red Hat Enterprise Linux) can be viewed here.

The following chart shows the RAP results obtained between August 2009 and February 2010, with average reactive scores plotted against average proactive scores for each product. (The detection figures from any test during which a product generated false positives are omitted (for that product) from the average calculations.) This chart is updated on a bimonthly basis. Virus Bulletin subscribers have access to the detailed results of the RAP tests, including a per-test RAP quadrant.

The test measures products' detection rates across four distinct sets of malware samples. The first three test sets comprise malware first seen in each of the three weeks prior to product submission. These measure how quickly product developers and labs react to the steady flood of new malware emerging every day across the world. A fourth test set consists of malware samples first seen in the week after product submission. This test set is used to gauge products' ability to detect new and unknown samples proactively, using heuristic and generic techniques.

A full description of the RAP testing methodology and explanation of how to interpret the results graphs can be read here.

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