See http://www.matousec.com/ for more information.
I believe they scored around 37% which I found shocking at the time I was using it. My knowledge is an outgrowth of discovering that both Zone Alarm and Norton System Works Professional 2003 would not install on a Windows Server 2003 Standard. I was able to obtain that O/S gratis due to Microsofts philanthropic program Dreamsparks which entails students licensed copies of various Microsoft titles free of charge. At the time I was taking a college course in Microsft Server Management. I also was able to obtain licenses for Visual Studio 2008 Professoinal, SQL Server 2008 and several others, all for free as a student.
Since I was both long-term unemployed and a student, I nneded to find suitable alternatives for AV & firewall that were free. That's when I discovered that both Norton & Zone Alarm actually fared quite poorly. An AV that scored rather well is Rising. However, investigation reveals that it phones home to China for its AV def updates. You'll do well also with Lavasoft's latest incarnation of Ad-Aware (also free). The boys at Wilders Security forum were speaking very highly of its AV engine a while back. The engine was acquired from another company that had a very high reputation. It is a solid piece of technology.
Malwarebytes is another solid technology to have installed purely for serendipity reasons. Its not so good at prevention, but it scores the highest in removal ability. Its always good to have as a backstop when another anti-malware squawks but can't remove the offense. One never needs to run its manual scan for any real reason except when adjunct AV can not remove a particular infection. One never wants to have to install anything when one is already infected.
I'm very happy with Comodo. I have no interest to get into a political imbroglio concerning it and its competetor's fanbois, nor the business squabble between Matousec and the owners of Online Armour (which frankly I find disgusting), and all the Comdodo competetor fanbois screaming ad hominem at Matousec becuase their pet software fails testing by Matousec.
My security is backstopped with SpyBot Search & Destroy v1.62 and Windows Defender, along with periodic update of HOST file from http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm (which appears to be down at this time). The entries in HOST from mvps.org will prevent navigation to known malware sites. Moreover, Spybot's real-time protection transparently blocks download of cookies from known malware sites. Moreover, its immunize feature adds its own URLs into the HOST file and enters those into the browser restricted zone.
In conjunction with this I have the Content_IE5 folder blocked in Comodo for all executables and archive files thereby protecting me from virtually any drive-by download attack. Furthermore, SVCHost has been hardened so that it can not be tricked to execute anything without permission out of any temp folder.
After a year and 1/2 of operation, the security baseline for the O/S and all applications have been sufficiently established that anything makes the slightest move on my system and Comodo will alert somethings up. Those things that Comdodo monitors and alerts on are:
The firewall is likewise just as robust allowing establishment of global rules for both inbound / outbound screening. It is a true stateful inspection technology, and so unsolicited connection attempts are dropped transparent to the user. Were Comodo firewall excells is in its notificatio of outbound connection attempts. It informs in detail what is attempting connection, where its attempting connection to and what specific IP protocols are being implemented for the connection.
As I indicate Comodo is very comprehensive and very robust. And its FREE. The support forums are outstanding. However, the more proficient, adept and competent the user is specifically concerning networking, internet connectivity protocol, and fundamental operating system functionality the greater degree of hardening that the user will be able to configure. That being said, the default neophyte user config is way better than nothing, and heads and shoulders above all but the highest fee based products.
The two noteworthy competitors in that regard: Online Armour and Swiss based Avira. You could go Comodo sans the AV at installation time and run with Avira and you'd be rock solid. But I'd question why waste the money? Reliance on AV means its already gotton through the HIPS and firewall and now has a beachhead on your system. The user is in trouble at that point regardless of how effective the AV is.
With all the free versions and paid versions of software that I've tried, I agree with you about Norton.
I also found Mcafee to be slow to find a problem.
My best finder of problems, short of Online Armor++, was Advanced SystemCare Free (formerly Advanced WindowsCare Personal), but several technicians told me to delete it, because they stole code from other companies.
It was great for keeping Windows in line from registry errors, but several people told me that it probably was the source for my virus problems.
I haven't tried Windows Defender, and I found Windows Security Essentials a major power hog, and it didn't play well with other software, so I uninstalled it.
I really like SpywareBlaster, Spybot-Search & Destroy, CCleaner, RootRepeal - Rootkit Detector, and Secunia Personal Software Inspector.
I also use Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and SUPERAntiSpyware - LIFETIME SUBSCRIPTION.
I need to know how to lock down a folder. Online Armor can lock down a file, but doesn't offer the ability to lock down a folder.
And I need to know how to lock down the Content_IE5 folder. I'm just now learning how to get control of SVCHost but I need to know more about the port In/Out and TCP/UPD controls.