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ESET’s response to NSS Labs Advanced Endpoint Protection test results

Created: 2018-04-18 00:00:00

Tony Anscombe, ESET global security evangelist

This week at RSA in San Francisco, NSS Labs released their Advanced Endpoint Protection test results. We, ESET, wish it go on record that we were never invited to participate with our products in this test. In the test result published in 2017, we experienced numerous issues when participating in the test, it consumed resources and NSS Labs failed to publicly correct all the inaccuracies despite their agreement to remedy them at a meeting in April of 2017.

At the same meeting we requested early visibility to the methodology for the 2018 test. We received no communication on methodology and in October 2017 so we requested it again; after numerous, repetitive email requests we received the document. The ESET team documented questions and concerns on numerous points in the methodology, we sent our concerns to NSS Labs in October, they never responded to any of our concerns or questions. Again after numerous emails and 2 months later we eventually managed to get a representative of NSS Labs on the phone, they admitted to not having read our concerns and provided no answers to our questions.

During this call it transpired that invites to the endpoint protection test had been sent to vendors, surprised we confirmed that we never received one. They committed to come back to us on this, but to date have not communicated with us about the missing invite.

We even contacted their CEO in January and he agreed to talk to the NSS Labs team and come back to us on all the outstanding point including the missing invite and the questions on methodology. They never did, however, after further follow up by us they did claim they sent us a PDF document. We never received this and we were told by NSS Labs this was probably due to issues with their email system. They never resent it.

When you read the test report you need to be aware that, some vendors paid for a pre-test, vendors that received an invite had the opportunity to optimize the configuration of their product, and then they have been able to dispute the results to improve the test score for their product.

ESET is committed to providing best in class security products and solutions to our customers. Our resources are focused on working with ethical and professional companies, you can see the results for our products in many industry tests. When or if you read the NSS Labs test results we hope you find it belongs in the circular grey filing cabinet under your desk, the same place I put my copy of the report.

Read more about our opinion on testers and testing at welivesecurity.com.  

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About ESET

Founded in 1992, ESET is a global provider of security software for enterprises and consumers. ESET’s award-winning, antivirus software system, NOD32, provides real-time protection from known and unknown viruses, spyware, rootkits and other malware. ESET NOD32 offers the smallest, fastest and most advanced protection available, with more Virus Bulletin 100 Awards than any other antivirus product. ESET was named to Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 five years running, and has an extensive partner network, including corporations like Canon, Dell and Microsoft. ESET has offices in Bratislava, SK; Bristol, U.K.; Buenos Aires, AR; Prague, CZ; San Diego, USA; and is represented worldwide in more than 100 countries.