A study conducted by Austria based company AV-Comparatives has come to a conclusion that most anti-virus apps prevailing on Google Play Store fail to provide defensive tools against malware invasions.
According to the details available to Cybersecurity Insiders, the Austrian based antivirus company downloaded more than 250 anti-malware apps from various developers and analyzed their performance against more the 2000 common malware threats prevailing in the current cyber landscape.
The automated testing framework of AV-Comparatives says that most of the antivirus apps prevailing on the play store were incapable of defending the device from most dreaded malware and other security threats.
However, the good news is that only 23% were able to detect and block 100% of the malware samples which includes AVG, Avira, Avast, Sophos, TrendMicro- to name some.
The analysis of AV-Comparatives determines that over 80 apps from the said 250 were able to detect 30% of malware threats along with zero false alarms. And only 138 of such apps were able to block less than 30% of malware samples, high false alarm rates and cleaning of files from the Google Play Store.
Security analysts from the security firm said that the antivirus versions working on the latest Android operating systems were able to defend themselves from most dreaded malware, while the ones operating behind Nougat OS were susceptible to malware attacks such as Cryptojacking and mobile ransomware.
So, while downloading an Android antivirus app, AV-Comparatives recommends looking for User ratings and downloading counts to access whether the app is a fraudulent or is working in reality.
Also, the app which has got an endorsement from the Austrian Federal Government and the regional government of Tirol, advice android users to download anti-malware solutions only from trusted vendors, sources and platforms.
