This year’s Epsilon winner is a-squared Anti-Malware!

That award winning was not only based on our efforts, but also on the massive support of the a-squared Anti-Malware user community.

Thank you very much!

The prize includes:

• A piece of art by an European artist and a winners certificate.
   
• 200 Euro in cash. Emsisoft will donate that amount to the SOS Children’s Villages organization that was founded in Austria.
   
• Press coverage of our products.
   
• Entry to the Hall of Fame which means free full access for the winner only to future ESWCs.

Here’s a short explanation of the Epsilon banner from the ESWC website:

Epsilon is the fifth letter of the Greek alphabet and the Phoenician Word for sun derives from that root. An astronomer knows that there is a constellation in space called (Lambda)-Epsilon which we can see at the right hand side. So the Epsilon Award is a combination of Excellency, craftsmanship and visionary ability. These are characteristics of an outstanding programmer and a piece of true software art.

a-squared Anti-Malware 4.5 was tested and won the coveted ProtectStar Award 2009!

Please check out the full 6-page detail review of a-squared Anti-Malware 4.5.

a-squared Anti-Malware was nominated for the Epsilon software award 2009. This award is given to the best software during the European Software Conference event, which is held once a year in Berlin, Germany.

The voting period just began and lasts until October 27, 2009, so please give us your vote!

We need your help to win! Please go to the voting website, scroll down to the bottom and click the Next button. Then select a-squared Anti-Malware from the list and submit your vote.

Thank you very much!

Full quote of their conclusion:

The Good

Although it brings to the table a plethora of options and fine tuning settings, a-squared is easy to manage by any average user. Its detection rate was over 98% and the flexibility in letting you decide upon online threats is to be fully appreciated.

The initial wizard can help you set up the entire application while the main screen gives way to fine tuning options in order to customize the way it protects your system. For each app on the computer you can create rules to restrict their performance or receive alerts when suspicious behavior is detected.

The various layers of protection can be enabled/disabled at will and all a-squared activity is logged for later reference. Scheduling system is very well thought, offering the chance to plan scans at specific times, dates and with a certain frequency, as well as define a start and end interval.

In order to reduce the amount of alerts, community knowledge can kick in and decide for you, according to your pre-configuration.

The Bad

Surf Protection alerts can be quite annoying, especially if you’re in the habit of roaming the less-known paths of the web. If tracking cookies are okay to block, with hosts things are different and many users may feel the urge to disable surf protection.

The Truth

a-squared managed to score high in our tests and prove that it can be a great ally against the cyber threats. It is easy to handle and the help file thoroughly explains every option in the program.

Background Guard can easily help you monitor any application for suspicious activity, as well as deflect malware-like activities on your computer.

Each program launched on the system can be scanned upon execution in order to make sure that its activity is benign. Alert system is flexible enough to let you automatically create a rule for the notifications you receive and thus reduce the amount of pop-up messages displayed.

EDITOR’S RATINGS: User Interface: Features: Ease of use: Pricing/Value: Overall:

Methodology:

The MRG testers have installed and tested 25 different security solutions to see if they can prevent virus infections. From pure antivirus over firewalls with antivirus features to full internet security suites. To make the test as representative as possible, they have executed 60 different nasties. All samples of malware used in this test came from infected machines, samples were collected in August 2009.

The test results:

Only less than 50% of the tested security products were able to protect the test system.

a-squared Anti-Malware has detected all malware samples!

On request, MRG told us that a-squared Anti-Malware was the only product which was able to detect all samples purely based on signature detection. The behavior blocker part was not even needed to prevent the infections.

The tables shows: Program tested, Amount of samples blocked, Amount of Samples missed, Passed or Failed the test.

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