An independent testing lab released the results of their research to show that one company came out on top.
AV-Test released the data from its six month long Android mobile security app stress test, last week, and assigned scores to the products from a number of different companies, identifying a clear leader.
The highest overall score was assigned to one company though there were 21 that underwent the test.
Norton Mobile Security was seen as the best performing by the independent German testing lab. There were 21 different apps tested on three separate occasions since January 2013. Among them, the highest detection rates were achieved by Bitdefender Mobile Security and Antiy AVL, achieving 99.8 percent. Norton’s mobile security detection rate score was nearly that good at 99.3 percent, and in third place came Trend Micro at 99.1 percent.
However, malware detection wasn’t the only element of mobile security considered by AV-Test.
The malware protection was only the start of the mobile security features that were taken into consideration by AV-Test in its approach to assigning a score. It also looked into additional protection tools such as anti-theft features. Moreover, they also rated the products based on usability. To do this, they looked into the app impacted the overall user experience on the device when it was installed and running.
In this light, it looked into the mobile security app’s impact on the life of the battery, false positives when scans were made, background data loading, as well as others.
Overall, an app was able to receive a perfect score that consisted of 13 points. Norton Mobile Security achieved the highest score overall at 12.5 points. Bitdefender was not far behind at 12.3 points. Trend Micro and Lookout tied their score at 12.2 points, and both ESET and Comodo had 12 points, which was still considered to be very respectable.
It is important to note that not all mobile security apps have been around since January and were therefore only able to undergo the test twice instead of a full three times. They were rated in a different category. McAfee Mobile Security, for example, was able to achieve a score of 12.8 points, but it underwent the stress test only twice, instead of three times. Similarly, MicroWorld and Kingsoft were both tested twice and each scored 12.5 points.
