Trend Micro is endorsing a new third party anti-malware testing methodology that better reflects today's "real-world" conditions instead of using antiquated testing techniques that don't test computers against the latest threats coming from the Internet.

"With its new approach to testing antivirus products, NSS Labs is providing two key metrics in addition to traditional threat detection rates: First, measurement of detection and blocking of threats based on their URL source; and second, measurement of the time delay between when a security vendor is first aware of a potential new threat and when protection from that threat is available at customer endpoints, the so-called 'time-to-protect'," said Raimund Genes, CTO of Trend Micro.

"Trend Micro is pleased we performed well in these tests but, more importantly, we look forward to the advances in anti-malware product testing that better align third party testing with the actual security provided to the customers of these products," said Genes. "The focus of third party testing should be on protection for the customers, which extends far beyond simple detection.

In a group test of industry-leading consumer and corporate security products' effectiveness against socially engineered malware, Trend Micro scored the best, proving again that the cloud-client layered-protection approach powered by the Trend Micro(TM) Smart Protection Network(TM) infrastructure out-performs competing solutions and provides the best possible malware protection available. The non-commissioned tests were independently conducted by NSS labs - no vendor sponsorship was involved.

Trend Micro products that were tested include: Trend Micro(TM) Internet Security for consumers, and Trend Micro(TM) OfficeScan(TM) Client/Server Suite for enterprises. Trend Micro products easily beat out those of competitors, including Kaspersky, McAfee, Symantec, F-Secure, AVG, Panda, Sophos, Eset and Norman

"In-the-cloud reputation systems boosted protection significantly on average and Trend Micro achieved the best download and execution protection," said Rick Moy, president of NSS Labs. "It became obvious from this test that Trend Micro has made considerable strides in adding cloud reputation-based protection to their arsenal.

Trend Micro's consumer product achieved an over-time protection rating of 96.4 percent (see Chart #1). Trend Micro stopped 91 percent of downloads; it recognized as malicious and stopped an additional 5.5 percent of malware after it was executed, for a total block rate of 96.4 percent. The full consumer test report is available upon registration: http://nsslabs.com/host-malware-protection/consumer-anti-malware.html

Trend Micro OfficeScan Client/Server Suite, the company's enterprise and medium business flagship endpoint security product, scored highest of any corporate endpoint security products. The full enterprise report is available for purchase: http://nsslabs.com/host-malware-protection/corporate-endpoint-protection-products.htm

"Trend Micro OfficeScan utilizes standard client-server architecture. The management console was streamlined and intuitive. Office Scan was easy to use and had no issues during the course of our test. Protection was consistently excellent throughout testing," said NSS Labs.