Technological breakthrough in war against malware writers

Innovators behind a breakthrough real-time malware detection technology are hailing the increased security reported after independent tests of the in-the-cloud protection system.

McAfee said its internet-based Artemis Technology's ability to protect against attacks from malware has received high ratings since entering the market in the last quarter of 2008.

Users are given active protection 'on the fly' when a computer gets hit by malicious computer code. A spokesman said Artemis was the industry's first technology to shield computer users against attacks as they happen without requiring a traditional scheduled update of threat signatures to be installed on the machine.

'Customers using Artemis are experiencing a notable increase in protection from a variety of new attacks,' said Jeff Green, senior vice-president of McAfee Avert Labs and Product Development. 'With Artemis, there is no lag time - we can protect you within minutes of when malware is in the wild.'

The AV-Comparatives website found that McAfee beat leading competitors in total detection percentage rates, while also providing the lowest false-positive rating available.

And Germany's ComputerBild named the company as the vendor with the highest malware detection rate, with Artemis having returned the least false positives. Artemis handled an average of 80 million queries every day with 25,000 new malware samples added daily, a company spokesman said. 'Traditionally, malware detection has relied on databases with threat signatures installed on a user's PC and updated on a regular basis. This traditional approach to detecting malware does not suffice with today's malware onslaught - where the delay between DAT updates can allow for a crippling infection to take hold of a consumer's computer or even a company's network.'

Mr Green added: 'Today's threat landscape doesn't give you the luxury of time when it comes to being protected. Last year alone, 1.6 million unique pieces of malware were detected - a 450 per cent increase from the previous year. McAfee protects customers from these threats faster than any other security vendor.'