CYSEC Free Anti-Virus Review

By

Aug 18th


CYSEC AV

CYSEC AV

I have been a fan of the CYSEC Cyber Security related videos for a while, visiting their website on and off for the last couple of years. In 2011 they released a Free Anti-Virus, which being version one of the product I wasn’t expecting much, but I was pleasantly surprised.

It wasn’t, at the time, the best free AV on the market, it still needed some work. But over the last 24 months they have completed a number of updates and the product is GREAT!

We tested it against AVAST and AVG which are another two free AV products to see how they all stacked up. We tested detection rates, resource use and usability.

On detection rate CYSEC was always going to be the winner, why? Because they use a central database that test the file against every known AV vendor on the market, over a 1000 different test Malware CYSEC detected 97% of all Malware, AVG with 86% came in a distant second and AVAST with 84% scooting up behind.

Resource wise it was again a clear win for CYSEC. During our extensive testing CYSEC used only 2500kb of memory!! Compared to that the other two vendors were using 10-20 times that number depending on what they were doing. We also found that CYSEC used significantly less CPU time than the other two vendors, although to be fair that is likely because of the different capabilities of the three products.

Finally usability, I loved the fact that with CYSEC I could drag and drop a new file on to the CYSEC start screen and it would automatically scan it for a Virus, Trojan or Malware and quarantine anything suspect. I also liked that I could easily access the quarantined files via a single click, in case I wanted to recover the file (I do a lot of AV research, so sometimes want the Malware back). I am sure this would also be useful if it were to find any false positives, although in our test it didn’t classify anything incorrectly.

The only drawback was when I wanted to do a full system scan (about once a week) CYSEC AV required me to download a separate installer, presumably to ensure it always had the latest signatures.

AVAST came second on usability, having a fairly typical AV interface but allowing individual and full scans with a few clicks. It would be harsh to say AVG was difficult to use, but I found it less intuitive than CYSEC and AVAST.

I can’t argue with CYSEC AV, it has the best detection rate of all the Free AV we have tested and a number of the full price AV products, it is intuitive to use and takes up almost no resources, ensuring that it does not slow down your machine, which has been a real problem with other vendor products. It is also looks good, which while not critical in today’s modern applications is certainly appreciated by the users.

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