Our 2025 Security Testing Methodology

Transparency Report: How we independently audit, stress-test, and rate antivirus software.

The SecureChoice Promise: We operate a dedicated testing environment. We purchase every license anonymously to ensure we test the exact same software available to consumers.

1. The Hardware "Test Rig"

To ensure our results reflect real-world usage, we test every antivirus suite on two distinct hardware configurations using clean installs of Windows 11.

The Power User Rig: Intel Core i9, 32GB DDR5 RAM, 2TB NVMe SSD. Used to test gaming performance and heavy multitasking.
The Budget Laptop: Intel Core i5 (8th Gen), 8GB RAM. Used to simulate the average family computer performance.

2. Security Stress Testing

We utilize an isolated Virtual Machine (VM) environment to safely unleash threats against the software.

Real-World Samples: We expose the software to a database of 500+ recent malware samples.
EICAR Verification: We use industry-standard EICAR test files to check "Real-Time Protection" response times.
Ransomware Simulation: We simulate encryption behaviors to test if the software can detect and rollback unauthorized file changes.

3. Performance Impact

Security shouldn't slow you down. We use PCMark 10 benchmarking tools to measure:

Boot Time Impact: Seconds added to startup.
File Transfer Lag: Slowdown during large file copies.
Background Resource Usage: CPU and RAM consumption during idle states.

4. Scoring System

Our final ratings are calculated using a weighted formula:

40% - Security: Detection rates and false positives.
30% - Performance: System speed impact.
20% - Usability: Interface design and ease of setup.
10% - Value: Price-to-feature ratio.