Kaspersky was indeed perfect, with a 100% detection average and zero false positives. In Austrian lab AV-Comparatives' February-May 2019 series of tests, Bitdefender's defenses were nearly perfect, stopping an average of 99.9% of online malware and racking up just two false positives. Microsoft had 39 and Avast and AVG 26 each, while Kaspersky had only three, indicating a well-tuned detection engine.

However, Bitdefender registered the most false positives - 47 - among all five malware engines over those two-plus years.

They missed some zero-day malware 15 times since January 2017, and some widespread malware 10 times. Windows Defender was in the middle of the pack, consistently detecting either 100% or 99.9% of known malware, but missing the mark with zero-day malware seven times over 28 months.īringing up the rear were Avast and AVG, which use the same malware engine. Only Kaspersky did better, detecting both types of malware all the time until it finally stumbled in April 2020 with a 99.0% detection rate of zero-day malware. Over all 24 of German lab AV-Test's monthly evaluations in 20, and in the first four tests of 2020, Bitdefender detected 100% of known 'widespread' malware in every time, but missed some previously unseen 'zero-day' malware three times.

In recent evaluations conducted by independent malware-testing labs, Bitdefender did very well, although it showed a tendency to make false warnings. (Image credit: Tom's Guide) Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition: Antivirus performance

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