PC Matic – Leader in Virus Bulletin RAP Test

PC Pitstop is thrilled to announce that PC Matic Home & PC Matic Pro are once again leaders in the well respected Virus Bulletin RAP Test, surpassing all competitors in proactive detection in the most recent December 2015 results. 

This test looks at each software’s ability to detect millions of malicious files both at a proactive and reactive level.  The malware samples are updated each time the test is conducted, ensuring these programs are being tested with the most current listing of emerging malware possible.  The results report PC Matic ranked first in the proactive approach, scoring an 89.8% in detection, with the closest competition being a full 8% behind the lead with a proactive score of 81.8%.  This provides unbiased, third party evidence that our whitelisting method provides superior results when it comes to preventing and reacting to PC security issues, compared to our competitors’ blacklisting and heuristic approaches.

“…the approach [whitelisting] has produced some spectacular detection levels.” – Virus Bulletin

PC Matic has been utilizing the whitelist approach since January of 2011.  Whitelisting involves the creation of a list of programs and files that are known to be safe and virus-free, unlike blacklisting which simply is a list of known malicious viruses, malware, etc.  The issues blacklisting creates is, by changing one component, the malicious file can be slightly modified and is no longer detected by the blacklist, thus leaving an open door to your PC for attack.  These issues are virtually  nonexistent when dealing with a whitelist approach, as PC Matic and PC Matic Pro’s whitelist are a consistently updated list of tested, malicious-free programs and files.

The security industry, including the testing houses such as Virus Bulletin, place a higher value on not blocking good files (false positives) than accurately identifying bad files (false negatives). In the Virus Bulletin methodology, there is zero tolerance for false positives. If a product has one false positive out of a million, then the product fails VB100 certification. On the other hand, the exact same product can misidentify hundreds if not thousands of bad files as good with little consequence on ratings and certification. The most recent Virus Bulletin testing included approximately one million good files, and PC Maticincorrectly identified less than a ninety. This represents less than a .01% error rate or over 99.99% whitelist accuracy rate.  Since the August RAP Test, we have continued to improve our whitelisting technology, which is evidenced by the 90% decrease in false positives in the most recent test.

In the event of a false positive, PC Matic minimizes the customer impact. The good process is not allowed to run, but it is not erased from the hard drive. The process is sent to our research team to be re-categorized within 24 hours.  Although this may provide a minor inconvenience, it is considered minimal when compared to allowing a potentially malicious file into the PC for corruption.

With the improvements that PC Matic has implemented since the December 2015 testing, there will surely be a larger gap between PC Matic’s security software and that of the competitors when this year’s results are released.  In the meantime, here are additional things Virus Bulletin had to say about PC Matic,

“installation…is fairly quick and simple”

“performance measures show very light resource usage”

“memory consumption in particular being lower than our baseline measures..”

Below is a graph of all of PC Matic’s historic Virus Bulletin test results.  By clicking on the graphed plots, you will be directed to each individual report.  The reports are also available via the table below, by clicking on the month/year to access the full report. The table also shows the exact RAP score for each test. 

PC Matic Historic Virus Bulletin RAP Test Results