Redwood City, California, United States, February 7, 2019 - Avast (LSE:AVST), the global leader in consumer cybersecurity products, today announced that Avast Free Antivirus has been awarded “Product of the Year 2018” by one of the industry’s most prestigious testing labs, AV-Comparatives. AV-Comparatives is an independent test lab that is known for its rigorous testing of security software products. The “Product of the Year” award is given to the antivirus product that consistently performs the best throughout the year. While product pricing is not part of the tests’ assessment criteria, with this award, Avast Free Antivirus beat all paid security products tested by AV-Comparatives.

“AV-Comparatives is one of the industry’s leading independent antivirus testing institutions, so winning the ‘Product of the Year’ award is like winning the world championship of antivirus products. The recognition of Avast Free Antivirus as ‘Product of the Year’ is a testament to our technological leadership in the cybersecurity space,” said Ondrej Vlcek, President, Consumer, at Avast. “Whether it’s new types of crypto-mining attacks, banking trojans, or increasingly sophisticated phishing campaigns, the complexity of threats is constantly evolving. In 2018, we saw the dawn of adversarial AI and the growth of IoT devices as a growing target for hackers. Staying ahead of these threats requires continued technological progress and innovations, and that’s exactly what we’re focusing on at Avast.”

Avast’s threat detection network is among the most advanced in the world, protecting hundreds of million users globally by using big data and machine learning technology to analyze and block around 1.5 billion threats every month.

Avast was named winner of the coveted “Product of the Year” award after it achieved an Advanced+ classification in every test carried out by AV-Comparatives in 2018, scoring highly in protection against real-world threats. Reviewers also praised Avast Free Antivirus for its clear, modern, touch-friendly interface and comprehensive Smart Scan feature. In addition to this highest accolade, Avast also achieved the Gold Award for the Malware Protection Test.

Every year, AV-Comparatives tests about 18 Windows compatible security products as part of its annual security report. All products are tested on the ability to: protect against real-world threats, identify malicious programs, provide protection without slowing down the PC, and remove malware that had already infected a PC. The highly coveted “Product of the Year” accolade is awarded to the product which receives the highest overall scores across all of the tests in the Public Consumer Main Test Series.

“The robust protection of PCs has become extremely important in the face of increasing threats and attacks. It’s for this precise reason that we subject these products to rigorous testing every year,” said Andreas Clementi, Founder and CEO of AV-Comparatives. “Across all seven tests Avast achieved the highest standard, and we’re delighted to name it as our ‘Product of the Year’.”

Avast Free Antivirus’ award-winning malware protection core technology is also included in its family of consumer security products: Avast Internet Security, Avast Premier and Avast Ultimate, as well as in its Avast Business Endpoint offering.

The full report can be found here: https://www.av-comparatives.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/avc_sum_201812_en.pdf

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