McAfee challenges Consumer Reports survey

As noted on CNET a few days ago, venerable Consumer Reports has published the results of its own security software testing in its September 2006 issue. Now esteemed security vendor McAfee has published an open letter challenging Consumer Reports' methodology. Indeed, I raised my eyebrows when I saw that Consumer Reports had tested antivirus heuristics by creating 5,000 new variants of existing viruses to see how well the products performed at stopping new viruses.

McAfee cites a long list of antivirus researchers who are on record saying that creating new viruses is not an acceptable practice in testing antivirus performance, and McAfee points to credible third-party sites, such as AV-comparatives.org, for more sound antivirus testing methodologies.