Securing Vista: Virus Bulletin's list

After Fridays post I decided to do some more digging around and find out if anyone independent has performed an authoritative test. Of course there are the usual magazines but rather surprisingly I hadn't found one yet that had made any major comparisons yet.

However, I found Virus Bulletin Magazine which is "a regular source of intelligence about computer viruses, their prevention, detection and removal, and how to recover programs and data following an attack."

The magazine is British based and edited by Helen Martin who would be a fascinating person to hear speak at the Girl Geeks, IMHO! (What da ya say Sarah?)

The recently published a list of 15 virus protection programs on the Vista platform which you can find here, you will be required to register to see the full article. In summary security is pitched against a list of commonly found virus found in the wild, imaginatively called the 'Wildlist' which the software must find, from the table below you can see what passed and what didn't.

Surprisingly, you can see that McAfee and Microsoft OneCare, two of the heavy hitters didn't pass which begs afew questions, not only about the software but also the test. I find it pretty hard to throw mud at something in public and for free and to back it up you have to pay £175 I feeling a little in the dark at exactly how these pieces of software failed and I feel that Virus Bulletin needs to give us some more info ! That said, things are getting abit clearer.