Kaspersky Lab reports that the proactive protection technology in Kaspersky Anti-Virus has earned the solution the top Advanced+ award from independent organization AV-Comparatives following heuristic and behavioral testing conducted in August.

The tests aimed to determine how effectively security solutions could cope when confronted with previously unknown malware samples not found in antivirus databases.

During the test security solutions had no access to the Internet. The specialists at AV-Comparatives compiled an array of malware which had appeared after the antivirus databases of the solutions were last updated. These conditions were intended to assess how well heuristic technologies detected malicious samples based on their behavior.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus delivered excellent results, successfully detecting and blocking 94% of the 1,109 malware samples. The 16 rival products averaged an 82.8% success rate.

“We are pleased by our product’s excellent performance in this test because it proves it can provide reliable protection even if the latest versions of its antivirus databases are unavailable for some reason. Proactive technologies are the future of the antivirus industry and we will continue to actively develop them,” said Oleg Ishanov, Director of the Anti-Malware Research Unit, Kaspersky Lab.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus is an advanced solution that delivers essential protection to the user’s computer. The product includes a number of key Kaspersky Lab technologies that reliably protect against malware. In late August, Kaspersky Lab released the latest version of the product – Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2014 – with improved security technologies. They include Automatic Exploit Prevention, developed to combat attacks via exploits, as well as an improved anti-blocker technology.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2014 was released at the same time as Kaspersky Internet Security 2014 which features all the technologies integrated in Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2014 plus numerous others which protect users from Internet-based threats.