Third Party Testing of Security is a Very Big Deal for Customers
Credit to Author: Greg Young (Vice President for Cybersecurity)| Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2019 13:00:27 +0000
User Reviews + Test Results
Peer reviews are an important part of product selection. Everything I buy on Amazon and most other things I buy I check for reviews first. That’s the “do I like it” or the test-drive part of the selection. But the “how well does it work” part is lab testing. I’m not expecting crash test results from folks who have taken a new Honda for a test drive. Independent lab testing is the other half.
The power cable of the laptop I’m writing this on has a 3rd party lab test label on it, and no one expects user reviews to do kind of function and safety testing.
Security function of our security products isn’t something that can be well tested except by a few really big buyers, and that isn’t usually shared or applicable to other environments (because the testing is for one environment).
3rd Party AND Independent
Every parent thinks their baby is the most beautiful, so no buyer should rely on a vendor’s own testing no matter how well documented. And the 3rd party test must be independent – not a test-for-hire.
We view earned third party testing as an important component of a healthy competitive landscape and we confidently make our products fully available for analysis.
Testing has to change to keep up with buyer reality. The endpoint security industry is going through some big changes:
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But all the above in the context of reality – what is tested must be the most important security function to support risk reduction, not testing only a single fad or single use case or function. As security product makers, we take good test lab feedback very seriously and use it as one of the feedback loops in product design and threat research.
Beware Paid Endorsements
Comedian Judah Friedlander always wears a hat that has “World Champion” printed on it. The gag is that he self-proclaims himself to be a world champion, and it doesn’t matter what he is a champion of because it’s just a hat he bought for himself. Trend Micro’s goal is to work with independent test labs that do not depend on “fees” to perform tests or custom evaluations. These aren’t independent or useful to buyers. Rather than leveraging these “pay for play” tests, we work with testing labs that evaluate vendors objectively using real-world environments and a level playing field. While other vendors may “sponsor” a test, provide their own sample malware for customers to test, or provide their own test results, we won’t buy a World Champion hat and expect you to take comfort in that. Trend Micro is committed to independent testing, helping us to provide the most objective information to our customers and the best feedback to our product teams.
Two Labs Say Our Baby is Beautiful
We’re proud to share that we’ve been recently recognized by two separate testing organizations for our endpoint protection platform.
NSS Labs, Inc. has just released the 2019 edition of their Advanced Endpoint Protection testing. Trend Micro’s endpoint solutions have performed very well, resulting in the desired “Recommended” rating. We had strong performance on “Security Effectiveness,” meaning that we detected and blocked threats very effectively. What’s more, we also had a low total cost of ownership, relative to most other vendors in the test.
AV-Test.org has also recently awarded Trend Micro the Best Protection Award for 2018. According to av-test.org:
“With this award, the independent test institute honors only the most effective security products that have shown outstanding performance during a one-year test phase and thus set new standards for the IT security industry. Trend Micro continuously demonstrated top performance throughout the entire 2018 test season, and therefore receives the AV-TEST Award 2018 in the test categories of “Best Protection” and “Best Performance.”
Further details on Trend’s performance is here.
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