avast poor rated by Malware Incident Reporting & Termination (MIRT) team

[Lisandro]

It's a near real-time listing of how well the major scanners detect new threats identified by the Malware Incident Reporting & Termination (MIRT) team. The results support my previous findings namely the class-leading new threat detection rate of AntiVir and the relatively poor performance of AVG and Avast! with Kaspersky and NOD32 falling in the middle. Perhaps more important than the product ranking, is the relatively poor performance of ALL products in detecting new threats. This reinforces the point I have been making in recent issues that you can no longer rely exclusively on signature based anti malware products to protect you from the current onslaught of new threats. That said, it should be noted that the detection of new threats is only one of several criteria you need to consider when assessing the performance of AV products. See also:
http://techsupportalert.com/issues/issue144.htm#Section_0
http://winnow.oitc.com/malewarestats.php

From Gizmo's newsletter of 13th December, 2007
http://techsupportalert.com/issues/al_current.htm

[polonus]

Hi Tech,

Yes, my friend, the new malware technology (Web 2.0 interactivity) and developments make various detection methods necessary. To rely solely on signature bases is an archaic procedure, but it certainly has not lost its usefulness. I think that lacking heuristics also plays a roll in the placement of avast's scanner, but that is a decision the developers made, and they seemed to have contemplated that on good grounds.
Other methodology should be brought in as well to make the balance is not tipped over in advance of the malcreants. I already use a cocktail of programs to keep my box secure, alas there is no other way...

polonus

[Lisandro]

I already use a cocktail of programs to keep my box secure

Which are they?