OPSWAT periodically releases reports examining market share trends within the global antivirus community. The latest latest Market Share Report includes updated worldwide market share data for leading antivirus applications, as well as some new analysis of operating system configuration. The information provided within this report was collected using OPSWAT Gears, a free device security tool that provides endpoint management and threat detection.
Report Emphasizes Importance of Endpoint Assessment
The most surprising statistic uncovered in this edition of report was that while 89% of surveyed Windows users had automatic updates set up for their systems, an astonishing 70% of those endpoints were still using out-of-date operating systems. It's unclear if this can be attributed to users perpetually delaying updates because they don't want to take the time to reboot their machines to install the updates or some other delivery failure, but the fact remains that for IT and security professionals this is an especially grim statistic.
Many malware exploits target operating system vulnerabilities that were identified and patched long ago, but if the software hasn't been updated the vulnerability remains open for exploitation.
It would be easy to assume that the statistic is driven by home users who are operating outside corporate security policies/secure data workflow environments, but as you can see the data collected in this report actually skews heavily toward corporate users. The data supports the use of endpoint assessment solutions like Gears to allow IT administrators to detect and remediate this type of software vulnerability.
Other Highlights
Password Protection: 32.3% of devices surveyed had no password protection enabled- Comparison of Top Antivirus Vendors: Microsoft is the leading vendor with a 26.6% market share, followed by Avast with 22.2%
- Comparison of Top Antivirus Products: avast! Free Antivirus is the most-installed antivirus product with a 17.3% market share, followed by Microsoft Security Essentials with 16.2%
The complete OPSWAT Market Share Report is now available for your review, so please take a look and let us know what you think!
Our data was pulled from a sample of approximately 4500 users between May and October of 2014. For a more detailed description of the data collection method and its limitations, see the data collection section of this report.
