MARCH 2020 • TECH ADVISOR 65not hard to navigate. However, during testing I often
kept thinking about its Avast counterpart, which I
found to be far more intuitive with items more readily
accessible and not buried under a mountain of clicks.
One thing that AVG Internet Security does make
very easy is the ability to scan your PC, as the Scan
Computer button is the most prominent item on the
primary dashboard.
Performance
Like many of the mainstream security programs,
AVG got very high marks for antivirus and malware
protection. A-V Test’s August tests gave AVG 100
percent detection in its 0-day and malware tests. In A-V
Comparatives’ real-world protection test, meanwhile,
AVG scored 100 percent as well with three false
positives out of 329 samples. When pitted against A-V
Comparatives’ malware protection test, AVG scored
99.8 percent in an online scan against nearly 38,000
samples and 98.8 percent offline.
SE Labs gave AVG an AAA rating, saying that both
it and Avast were the most effective free software in its
tests, but AVG did fail to detect five targeted attacks.
All three organizations used the free versions of AVG’s
antivirus, which doesn’t have the ransomware, firewall,
or phishing protection.
AVG also did well in our performance benchmarks.
When we ran PCMark 8’s Work Conventional test (a
simulation of everyday tasks like word processing, web
browsing, and video chat), our initial score was 2,521.
With AVG running in the background, that score was
2,524 – a tiny enough difference that the improvement