PC Pitstop's Whitelisting Effectiveness Proven in Recent Virus Bulletin Test

    SIOUX CITY, IA, February 19, 2016 /24-7PressRelease/ -- PC Pitstop, maker of the only commercial whitelisting security technology, today announced that PC Matic, its modern threat protection software, achieved the highest RAP (Reactive and Proactive) test score in the most recent VB100 Comparative Review. PC Matic outperformed all competition, in both proactive and reactive approaches, scoring a cumulative average of 92.5% (competition lagged between 4.5% and 67.4% behind).

Virus Bulletin looked at 21 different solutions' ability to detect millions of malicious files, with the results proving that PC Pitstop's whitelisting approach is superior to its competitors' blacklisting approach, when it comes to preventing and reacting to PC security issues. Virus Bulletin commended PC Matic's whitelisting approach for offering "impressive detection rates."

A recent Forrester Report discusses application control (i.e. whitelisting) as an essential endpoint security component, stating, "It's no mystery that antivirus (AV) technologies are fighting a losing battle against an increasingly sophisticated malware threat landscape... As a result, security professionals must consider a different approach, one that doesn't rely solely on an increasingly hard-to-manage signature blacklist. In its various forms, application control delivers a much-needed value proposition for endpoint protection."

Testing houses, like Virus Bulletin, place a higher value on not blocking good files (false positives) than accurately identifying bad files (false negatives). The Virus Bulletin methodology has zero tolerance for false positives, so a product with even one false positive, out of a million, fails VB100 certification.

"At the same time, a product can misidentify hundreds, if not thousands, of bad files as good files with little consequence on ratings and certification. Where these tests see a flaw in our .1% error rate, or 99.9% whitelist accuracy rate, (which creates a false positive), we see this as a flaw in testing methodology," said Dodi Glenn, vice president of cybersecurity at PC Pitstop. "It is understandable though - there is not a whitelisting technology like ours that prevents all of the bad files, and may hold potentially good files, until they are further analyzed. Nothing our clients need is blocked outright, which is very different than typically ineffective malware solutions."

PC Matic employs a blacklist for scan and clean and whitelist for real-time protection, which is updated daily through crowd sourcing. When a file is blocked because it is not on the whitelist, a sample is uploaded to PC Pitstop's servers, and then analyzed by a research team within 24 hours to determine whether it is a new strain of virus or that the whitelist must be updated. With PC Matic, a false positive is a one-time, minor inconvenience when compared to allowing a potentially malicious file into the PC for corruption. This architecture minimizes the customer impact compared to that of a blacklist approach, which interferes with the user's computer.

With the recent upsurge of malware, traditional antivirus products are struggling to keep up. A few simple malware modifications can easily bypass traditional blacklist detections, making it a constant game of cat and mouse. With whitelisting, these issues are virtually nonexistent, because it allows only trusted and vetted applications to run.

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About PC Pitstop
PC Pitstop takes a proactive whitelisting approach that prevents ALL malware and ransomware from infiltrating computer systems. PCMatic protects over a million of the most security conscious individuals; PCMatic Pro protects large enterprises and government agencies; and PCMatic MSP supports SMBs and MSPs. Where other solutions attempt to block a continuously growing list of every known cybercriminal and let everyone else in, PC Pitstop looks only for trusted applications. For more information, visit: http://www.pitstop.com.

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