You tell me. We had a very close finish in this round of testing. NSS tested six leading consumer endpoint protection (EPP) products against Microsoft Security Essentials and also against each other in order to determine which EPP product offers superior protection against socially engineered malware (SEM). 87,160 test runs later, we observed some interesting results.

Different products excelled in different areas. The combined block rate is arguably the most important statistic, but the products scored too close together in this area to decide. No, you’ll have to dig a bit deeper into the test results to find out which products excelled in the different categories. I’m an analyst; I know the answers, but what fun would it be for me if I just gave them away?

You decide what is most important after the combined total block rate:

• The time taken to add detection for new threats
• How the products fared over a seven-day period, or some portion of that time, against downloaded SEM (remember, the metric does not include SEM that is blocked on execution)
• The average block rate for downloaded SEM
• Perhaps your vote will be for the consistency of download protection over time?