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Purchasing a right and effective anti-virus software is a decision that most of us make on the basis of information gathered by advertisements/sales or colleagues. Often, the price is a considerable factor that influences the decision. However there are few independent institutes/organization of world repute that are engaged in real-time testing the products available globally and publishing their test results for the benefit of the general public. AV Test Institute and AV Comparables are two such independent testing organization engaged in evaluating among other things, real-time protection capabilities of anti-virus, anti-malware software.

Their tests results can be a valuable guide in choosing the right software. The test results of the both organizations for few popular software are tabulated here under. The tests have been conducted as under:

AV Institute-Two months period (July-Aug 2015) with Windows 7 SP1 64 bit as test platform.
AV Comparable- Four months period (Aug-Nov 2015) with Windows 7 SP1 64 bit as test platform.

Vendor	Bitdefender		Kaspersky Labs		Panda Security
Testing Institute	AV Test	AV Comparable	AV Test	AV Comparable	AV Test	AV Comparable
Product	Internet Security 2015	Internet Security 2015, 2016	Internet Security 2015, 2016	Internet Security 2016	Free Version 15.1	Free Version 16
Score: Protection Performance Usability Total Score Total Protection Rate	6 6 6 18.00	- - - - 99.99%	5.5 6 6 17.50	- - - - 99.99%	6 5 6 17.00	- - - - 99.99%

Vendor	Avira Antivirus Pro		Trend Micro		McAfee
Testing Institute	AV Test	AV Comparable	AV Test	AV Comparable	AV Test	AV Comparable
Product/Version	2015	15.0
Score: Protection Performance Usability Total Score Total Protection Rate	6 5 6 17.00	- - - - 99.99%	6 5 5.5 16.50	- - - - 99.99%	6 5.5 6. 17.50	- - - - 93.50%

Vendor	F-Secure		AVG		Quick Heal
Testing Institute	AV Test	AV Comparable	AV Test	AV Comparable	AV Test	AV Comparable
Product/Version	Internet Security 2015	Internet Security 2015, 2016	Internet Security 2015	Internet Security 2015	Total Security-16.00	Total Security-16.00
Score: Protection Performance Usability Total Score Total Protection Rate	6 5.5 5.5 17.00	- - - - 99.4%	6 4 6 16.00	- - - - 99.30%	4.5 3.0 5.5 13.00	- - - - 95.90%

Detailed reports can be accessed at the following links:

AV Comparables Click Here >> AV Test Click Here >>

ICAI has also come up with an announcement that it has tied up with Qucik Heal Technologies (P) Ltd. Pune at special discounted price.of Rs. 1000/- + taxes up to 31-12-2015 and In Rs. 1200/- + taxes for single user for the year 2016 and 2017. However, the test results of Quick Heal Total Security can be viewed as per the above said reports along with top scoring softwares.

Remember ! The protection and not the price should be the governing factor in selecting an anti-virus software.

ICAI Rs. 1000/- Quick Heal Tie up Expiring 31-12-2015. See Test Results of Top Anti-virus Software and Make Right Decision | 24-12-2015 |