• AV-TEST conducted rigorous evaluations over two months to compare the most highly regarded endpoint security offerings available. 
• Symantec® Endpoint Security Complete came out on top, with a consistent 100% protection score.
• AI-enabled Incident Prediction and Adaptive Protection features fueled that victory in a competitive field.

When it’s time to make a vitally important decision about which security solution to invest in, CSOs and their leadership teams often dig into product evaluations from reputable labs and trusted experts. For those evaluating endpoint security solutions, there’s some good news.

In fact, it’s not merely good. It’s perfect.

AV-Test—a recognized authority on security solutions for more than two decades—ran continuous evaluations of 15 highly regarded endpoint protection products. Recreating common attack scenarios and using real-world threats for two months earlier this year, AV-Test found that Symantec Endpoint Security Complete (SES-C) handily outperformed the competition, delivering a 100% protection score. That perfect score reflects SES-C’s ability to provide total protection against malware attacks, including web and email threats. It also includes 100% detection of prevalent and widespread malware spanning two months, in a sample set of over 12,000.

In 2026, protection is more valuable than ever

This is an exciting result, and it should be reassuring for security professionals sifting through a landscape filled with solutions that often make identical marketing claims. AV-TEST recognition conveys trust and reliability, and Symantec is proud to have achieved a perfect score year-over-year. We'll continue to participate in AV-TEST evaluations and those from other reputable labs because scrutiny by trusted experts allows us to showcase our strengths and sharpen our tools. And it helps light the way for organizations determining where best to invest their limited security budget. 

How does SES-C continue to garner top scores? In addition to covering the essential basics of endpoint protection, SES-C incorporates exclusive, built-in features like Adaptive Protection and Incident Prediction that enable security teams to adapt to defend against the changing threat landscape.

Adaptive Protection shrinks the attack surface

SES-C’s Adaptive Protection feature spots anomalous behavior and empowers admins to block risky ones as needed. Adaptive Protection informs policy changes, streamlines the spot-and-block cycle, and effectively shrinks the attack surface by disallowing by default anomalous use of legitimate software and OS components. It effectively stops living off the land (LOTL) attacks, even rooting them out before security systems have detected them. Since LOTL accounts for nearly 50% of ransomware attacks, Adaptive Protection’s ability to distinguish between illegitimate and legitimate actions makes it an enormously powerful defensive weapon. 

Incident Prediction leverages known TTPs

SES-C amplifies its protection with Incident Prediction. Incident Prediction uses machine learning (ML) and AI to predict an attacker’s next four to five moves, giving SOC teams advance warning and ample time to respond and protect. This works well because, while attackers do evolve, they tend to rely on a more stable and predictable set of Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs). Trained on a catalog of over 500,000 attack chains, Incident Prediction knows these TTPs inside out and it passes that knowledge on to the SOC who need it. 

Incident Prediction extends Adaptive Protection’s defensive power by giving it high-level intel to inform targeted policy changes. Together, these two features helped SES-C yield those 100% protection stats against a wide and ever-changing range of attacks. 

Zero false positives speak to SES-C’s outstanding usability

AV-TEST also gave SES-C high marks for usability. This matters almost as much as protection because, as the AV-TEST report notes, “false alarms can disturb the work routine just as much as malware attacks.” Their extensive testing of over 1 million samples landed zero false positives from SES-C. 

That’s zero false positives. None. Somewhere, a security analyst is cheering.

See the results

While 100% speaks for itself, seeing is believing. Check out the test results. Then contact your in-region partner for a demo. We’ve got a feeling your search for the right endpoint protection solution may be headed toward a very happy (dare we say perfect?) conclusion.