December 2019 • Macworld 45featuresthanKasperskyTotalSecurity.It’sa
mid-range product with a few extra features
including several nice privacy options.
Performance
Kaspersky has always been a top performer in
terms of malware protection and that is still the
case. The most current tests from AV-Test and
AV Comparatives used Kaspersky version 19
instead of Kaspersky 20, but we don’t expect
there to be any drops in quality between these
two versions of the detection engine.
InJune,Kasperskyscored 100 percentin
AV-Test’s widespread and prevalent malware test
using 557 samples. AV Comparatives, meanwhile,
also gave Kaspersky a 100 percent rating on its
malware protection and detection. For its tests,
AV Comparatives used 585 Mac malware samples,
as well as 500 Windows malware since Macs
can also become unwitting vehicles for Windows
malware distribution.
For our in-house spot tests, we downloaded
content from the Objective See malware library.
Kaspersky didn’t prevent us from downloading the
malware or from unzipping it. As soon as we tried to
run it, however, (and sometimes before) Kaspersky
detected the malware immediately and quarantined
the relevant files. It also added a lion’s roar each
time it did it, which was a fun touch. For the Wicar
web tests, Kaspersky had no trouble detecting this
malware and preventing us from viewing the page,
after we ignored Safari’s own built-in warnings.