"Anti-malignant shustyak"

From time to time, the question arises on the life path of each system administrator: which antivirus to choose for the company, given the constant competitive struggle in this market? Sometimes you will not follow who has a new functionality, and who else is "catching up".

Of course, when choosing an antivirus, we are interested in many parameters. Here are some of them:

• Versatility:

Must cope with everything at once (Trojans, Malvari, Spaybots, etc.)
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• Relevance of virus signatures:

To date, the branch of virus writing is developed to disgrace. This deals with who just is not lazy. Most, of course, are schoolchildren who want to realize themselves. But despite this, the virus and from under such hands can be harmful. Therefore, it is so important for us that the antivirus knows how to deal with viruses before they get into the network as “closest” as possible to its debut.

• Centralized management:

For a company with a large fleet of machines, of course, a tool is needed for centralized management of the antivirus product at workstations.

• System load:

Of course, maybe someone does not care about this issue when choosing an antivirus. To be honest, I didn’t bother me before either, while I was working in large companies. Computer slows down? Maybe check hard, check for viruses, rearrange the system? She, why ... It's a long time, better buy a new one! Now there is no such luxury. I have to work with the equipment of my school years. Therefore, for me, this parameter of the antivirus product is more relevant than ever. I think there are still a lot of such companies.

Therefore, in this article we will focus on performance on low-power hardware.
The testing will be attended by bright representatives of the antivirus family:

• Kaspersky Internet Security 2013
• Dr.Web 7.0
• NOD32 Smart Security 5
• Microsoft Security Essential


The study was conducted by Yevgeny Drobodun (the author of articles of a well-known journal) and his colleagues.
The most common netbook on the Atom 1.67 GHz, 2GB of RAM, graphics from Intel, hdd 300GB and Windows 7 Starter SP1 served as a victim for anti-virus attack.
Given that this kind of netbooks are used mostly for simple tasks (internet surfing, working with Microsoft Office documents, etc.), the study was carried out under the following loads:

1. Booting the OS without the installed antivirus and, accordingly, running with the installed candidates in turn
2. Launch of the same site in Chrome, both with and without antivirus
3. The same operations with the site in the process of updating the anti-virus database
4. Running Microsoft Word without and with pre-installed antivirus
5. The same is only in the process of a full scan of antivirus
6. Check a specific number of files
7. Archiving during full system verification

I also wanted to clarify that for a more plausible picture, all data were taken 30 times and the average value was found. The BootRacer utility was used to determine the OS boot time. To assess the download site and the launch time of Word documents - AppTimer.

It is also worth noting that before installing a new representative for testing, the OS was completely reinstalled.

Below are graphs for more visual analysis.

System load time

According to the results of this test, MSE and NOD32 took the lead, rather seriously ahead of their rivals. These two antiviruses practically do not slow down the system boot process, and it runs almost the same way as on the “clean” system.

Chrome website load time

To conduct this test, we’ll enter our site on the Chrom’s start page and configure AppTimer to launch the browser thirty times. After AppTimer finishes its business, the measurement results will be in the previously specified log file. Just as in the first case, we first check on the system without antivirus, then - with each antivirus in turn. Here, the clear leader is NOD32, then MSE with the “Doctor” and, with a big delay, “Kaspersky” follow almost equally.

Site loading time in Chrome with anti-virus database enabled

This test repeats the previous one, except that Chrom was launched when the anti-virus database update was enabled and the test was not performed on a “clean” machine. It is clear that the update process slows down the loading of the site, and this is evident from the results. As for the leaders and laggards, the picture is similar.

Document opening time in Microsoft Word

AppTimer will also serve as a measuring tool for this and the following tests. We will upload a not quite small document of about one and a half megabytes. As a result, we see that Dr.Web and KIS slowed down the process of launching Word and loading the document a little more than a second, while the work of the other two was not so noticeable. The leader here is MSE.
Test results

Opening time of a document in Microsoft Word with full computer scan enabled

Repeat the previous test, but with the included full computer scan for viruses. The leader remained the same, Kaspersky escapes to the second place, then, with a slight delay, NOD32, and the last comes Dr.Web.
Test results

File collection scan time

In this test, we will check how long each of the antiviruses does what it is intended for. To check, a folder was created containing 24,605 ​​different files with a total volume of 1.39 GB. In this test, two clear leaders are NOD32 and Kaspersky, and most of all, he rustled the heads of the hard disk trying to find some malware, Dr.Web. It is worth noting that both leaders have technologies in their arsenal that significantly speed up the rescanning, and for the purity of the experiment they were turned off.
Test results:

Archiving and unarchiving time

Well, in conclusion, we expose the netbook with each antivirus in turn to the last test: archive 219 files with a total volume of 1.16 GB while simultaneously checking the entire computer for viruses. For archiving, we will use the 7-Zip archiver, the type of archive being created is zip. This time, Dr.Web won, then MSE finished with a slight delay, NOD32 finished in third place, and Kaspersky was the last to finish behind the leader for more than a minute.
Test results

Summary Results Table

In conclusion, I would like to make a reservation. This article is not in any way an advertisement or anti-advertising of any anti-virus product. This is testing one of the parameters of the antivirus. Its effect on system performance. This parameter is usually not specified in any way by manufacturers in their advertising slogans and presentations, but it is undoubtedly important for some small companies with a small IT budget.
Relying on these results, it is impossible to say with certainty that someone is bad and someone is good. Also, do not forget that this industry does not stand still. Yesterday, one was the quickest, and tomorrow the other has already taken the palm. Of course, there are representatives who firmly hold their position, and not the first place, not wanting or not being able (?) To correct the opinion that has developed about them ... But let's not talk about sad things.

Thank you all for your attention. I hope someone this post and research will be useful, as I once did. I really look forward to comments and comments on the content and on the design too.