Three Products Achieve ICSA Labs Desktop Anti-Spyware Certification

Three products have earned ICSA Labs Desktop Anti-Spyware Certification. Those products are FortiNet's FortiClient Host Securitynet, McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.0i with McAfee AntiSpyware Enterprise Module, and Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition 10.0.

ICSA Labs anti-spyware testing criteria determines whether products can defend systems against spyware, keyloggers, password stealers, dialers, rootkits and adware. Products must be able detect and/or prevent the installation of spyware programs, neutralize spyware functionality on systems with spyware objects installed, report no false positives, log the results of spyware detection attempts, and perform necessary administrative functions, such allowing an administrator to enable and disable spyware detection, retrieve log records, and update the product over the Internet.

Larry Bridwell, Content Security Programs Manager at ICSA Labs, told Windows IT Pro Magazine that aside from the three products mentioned, there were other products that took part in the most recent tests and that more products are in the queue to be tested soon. However Bridwell could not name any of the products due to non-disclosure agreements with the vendors.

While ICSA Labs doesn't provide quantitative statistics that reveal how many companies rely on its product certifications to help make buying decisions, Bridwell said that in regard to anti-virus, anti-spyware, and PC firewall software, he receives at least one request per week to verify a company's claims of ISCA Labs certification. Bridwell added that tracking such statistics proves difficult due to various government and corporate policies.