Independent Evaluations of Networking Products and Tools

NETWORK TESTING LABS REVIEW

Endpoint Security Performance

Test Results

Waiting for a PC to boot (or reboot) is terribly unproductive. McAfee’s products added the least time to system startup, while the Trend Micro and Microsoft products added the most.

Microsoft and Kaspersky gave us the quickest system shutdown times, and Norton subjected us to the longest.

Hibernation time depended mostly on Windows itself. Except for Norton 360 V2, which slowed hibernation somewhat, the other products had little effect on time to hibernate.

The McAfee and Kaspersky products awakened the quickest after hibernation, while the Norton products fared the worst.

McAfee’s endpoint security products took considerably less time to perform scans of the hard drive. Norton and Kaspersky took the longest.

PC Mark Vantage is an industry-standard benchmark that reveals the extent to which running (resident) software consumes computing resources. McAfee’s products showed themselves to be the most highly optimized, and Microsoft’s product turned in the worst scores.

The McAfee products achieved the highest PC Mark Vantage scores during scanning operations. Microsoft’s product turned in the worst scores.

A gamer knows performance chiefly through the responsiveness of the game. McAfee’s products had the least effect on gaming. Microsoft’s and Kaspersky’s products slowed the gaming experience the most.

Can you use a video game even while a security product is scanning the hard drive for malware? The answer is yes for the McAfee products, maybe for Norton, Kaspersky and Trend Micro, and probably not for the Microsoft product.

A polite, well-optimized security product will slow the loading of Web pages as little as possible. McAfee’s products fared best in our Internet Explorer tests. Kaspersky and Trend Micro degraded I E the most.

The McAfee products had the least effect on iTunes when we transformed WAV files into MP3 files. Norton and Kaspersky impacted iTunes the most.

The McAfee security products were the quickest in our MP3 load tests. Trend Micro’s products were the slowest.

When we opened a sizable PowerPoint file in the presence of these security products, they all performed about the same.

In our email tests, the McAfee products processed Microsoft Outlook messages much faster than the other products. The Kaspersky and Trend Micro products were the slowest.

The McAfee products turned in the best times when Microsoft Outlook received 250 messages. Kaspersky was the laggard in this test.

Memory (RAM) consumption varied widely among the products we reviewed. The McAfee products and Norton 360 used the least, while the Trend Micro and Microsoft products exhibited the greatest “bloat.”

A security product’s high memory usage during a scan operation leaves less memory for other applications. Frugally, McAfee used the least memory during a scan, while Trend Micro and Microsoft consumed the most.

The Norton programmers completely revamped the installation procedure for the Internet Security 2009 product. It now takes about the same time as many other endpoint security products take. However, the Norton 360, Kaspersky and Microsoft installation procedures are interminably lengthy and tiresome.

Should the resident portion of an endpoint security product be spread out across several processes or just a few? While this issue arguably has many pros and cons, we feel a greater number of processes implies finer granularity. Trend Micro’s and McAfee’s architectures had more processes, while Kaspersky’s and Norton’s architectures had the least.

Executive Summary Discussion Report Card, Testbed and Methodology Detail Test Results