Virus detection

Question

I am evaluating a few different AV packages with a view to moving away from Symantec Endpoint Protection which I am unhappy with. As part of my evaluation of each package I have downloaded a collection of viruses from virussig.com and scanned them to see how many are identified.

With Sophos, if I create a new scan and include just the folder containing the viruses (sub-folders are automatically selected) it doesn't find a single virus. However, if i right-click on the folder and select Scan with Sophos Anti Virus, it detects 579 viruses (incidentally Kaspersky found 2600 in the same folder but that's a differnt matter). Can anyone explain why the normal scan doesn't find these viruses but the right-click does.

Thanks

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QC · Accepted Answer

Thanks for the link. As these files have no extension a "normal" scan does not include them. I had to configure it to Scan all files (as I assumed). This is - as mentioned - the default for right-click (and on-access has BTW Scan files with no extensions set). Can't judge the significance of the detection rate against these samples (of course the more the better but some non-viral malware might have only very limited prevalence and practically "extinct" in the wild). I think that performance and sensitivity of on-access (and download) scans and "zero-day" protection is more important, as well as manageability and last but not least a vendor's support and reaction time to new threats. HTH Christian :14841