Bitdefender Ranked First in the Q4 2022 VBSpam Test

The Bitdefender email security technology has been certified once again in all comparative tests performed by the premiere online publication Virus Bulletin.

Every quarter, Virus Bulletin runs the VBSpam test, which measures the performance of email security solutions and how they manage to update their services. The comparative report aims to find the most balanced offer and get companies to improve their products from one edition to the other. In this 70^th edition of the VBSpam test, Bitdefender was the only company out of 11 participants, whose product excelled in all areas analyzed.

Bitdefender’s new personal best

VBSpam+ is the highest certification granted by the world leader in security software analysis. To get this certification, a product must have a final score of at least 98, with delivery speed colors at 10% and 50% green or yellow, and at 95% green, yellow, or orange. The products that combine a spam catch rate of 99.5% or higher with a lack of false positives, no more than 2.5% false positives among the newsletters and ‘delivery speed colours’ of green at 10% and 50% and green or yellow at 95% and 98% earn a VBSpam+ award.

"Bitdefender’s performance in the Q4 2022 VBSpam test is impressive. The product’s VBSpam+ certification streak continues, this time with a final score of 99.98, the highest phishing catch rate in this test, and no ham or newsletter false positives,” according to the Virus Bulletin’s comparative review.

Counting this award, Bitdefender ranked first in the test for, the company being the only one to have achieved the VBSpam certification in all comparative tests ever performed by Virus Bulletin. So far, Bitdefender has earned 33 VBSpam+ awards, and it holds the record for most consecutive such recognitions with 0 FP and a very high detection rate.

"Bitdefender has been participating in Virus Bulletin's VBSpam testing program since its inception back in 2009 and has achieved a pass in every published test it has taken part in. The December 2022 VBSpam test report saw Bitdefender ranked first when compared by the Final Score (a position similarly held in the previous test) and the best performance among the phishing corpus. Their solid performance continues with a 33rd consecutive VBSpam+ award, which is the highest-level certification in the program.” according to Ionuț Răileanu (VBSpam Test Lead - Virus Bulletin).

The solution efficiently blocks malspam emails, has had optimum FP (false positive) scores since 2015, and works fast. These results prove that the Bitdefender email security technology has been constantly delivering excellent results by detecting even the most sophisticated email security threats, ensuring customers are armed with a strong shield against attacks, especially since email is the primary attack vector and any moment of weakness can be exploited by threat actors.

Why are email security solutions increasingly important?

With the changing threat landscape, nobody is ever truly safe online. Cybercriminals do not only target large companies in search of big gains, but individuals from whom they could get information such as addresses, social security numbers, debit and credit card data, and whatever type of information they can leverage against some illicit gains in the future. This is problematic for individuals because the information, once obtained, will circulate for years on the dark web and cause serious problems leading to identity theft and fund appropriation.

The most accessible forms of email fraud include phishing, usually done by imitating the email structure and address of a known company the recipient might have contact with, in which personal data is required. The user will be ‘baited’ to a website made to look like that of the company the cybercriminals are impersonating. Any information put down here is at great risk.

With a similar undercover operation plan, malware can be introduced in a user’s computer, blocking access until a certain sum is paid. And simply having to go through tens of unsolicited emails to get to what is important is tiring. Not to mention losing sight of important information because of the digital clutter. Being online has never been easier or more dangerous, or more demanding of users.

Not any type of email security option will do

People who get too much spam will likely get an email security option to filter these emails for them. But not all filtering services are created equal, and what may seem to users as minor fine-tuning may make the difference between the service letting a malware email through or blocking a necessary email address with vital information.

The VBSpam tests are run every quarter because cybercriminals and spammers are so quick to adapt overnight to any change that it’s challenging to keep up. Therefore, the top providers of email security solutions need to update their services and get better and better numbers every time.

The test looks at a service’s ability to filter through the incoming results and correctly pick out spam emails from those that are not. It looks at the overall spam catch rate while factoring in a false positive rate (how many of the emails marked as spam were not spam) and the specific catch rates of malware, phishing, and several spam feeds.