Best AntiVirus for Windows 8 and Windows 8.1
With the release of Windows 8 and 8.1, the quest started for securing the operating system from malicious software and viruses. The malware continues to grow, both in number and sophistication that has made its detection and removal difficult. The consumers and business users must be equipped with the best antivirus for Windows 8 or 8.1 to ensure maximum protection of data.
It is difficult to categorize any antivirus as the best universally. It might be strong in some features, while weak in some aspects. Lab tests have been performed on 25 products for consumers and 9 business related products to judge their performance against threats, their effect on system performance, and their frequency of generating false positives. These tests are performed by independent test lab AV-Test.
For each antivirus, the lab tested the latest version till last November and December to increase confidence in the statistics. They compared the business solutions to Microsoft System Centre Endpoint Protection and the products related to consumers to the Microsoft Windows Defender. For each product, AV-Test generated the scores for performance, protection, and usability. Each score varies from 0 to 6. These scores are added to make total aggregate.
Protection is usually defined by the blocking of known and unknown malware in the system. The products with the score of 6 were able to block all or nearly all of the external threats. Performance is the measure of the effect of the product on the system’s speed. The details of gathering the numbers in this case are not provided though. Usability is related to the number of false positive detections in various scenarios. It is a valuable measure of an antivirus nonetheless.
Following are the scores of the tested business solutions.
It is obvious that the standout business antivirus solutions for Windows 8/8.1 are Bitdefender, Kaspersky, and Trend Micro. F-Secure is not far behind also.
The results for consumer products are provided below.
The statistics clearly show that Bitdefender and Kaspersky are the best antivirus for consumers for Windows 8 or 8.1. Avira, F-Secure, Qihoo and G Data closely follow them.
The graphs shown below depict the percentage of malware blocked by each antivirus during testing of December.
The users can utilize these statistics to find the best antivirus for Windows 8 or 8.1 that satisfy their requirements.