While today’s threat landscape would seem broadly familiar to a threat researcher or security admin from 2020, it might startle a business owner or their employees from five years earlier.
The difference? How computers are used nowadays. Threats that used to be edge cases have moved towards ubiquity. The diverse and growing the number of computing tasks have introduced multiple new threat vectors, and those are matched by new capabilities and tactics which cyber criminals display in our time.
Essentially everything has scaled, and threat actors have powered up with evermore tech, including AI, that has increased productivity (or volume) and started to add to effectiveness, too. Perhaps most concerning is that the most mature criminal actors and threat groups have spent the last few years refining business-like tactics and management via various incarnations of Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS), passing on both malicious tech and practices to IT users with weak ethics.
Prevention First
To offset these troubling trends on the threatscape, ESET evolved its security DNA towards a prevention-first approach through 2024. This posture was ushered in via several AI-enabling upgrades to both the Endpoint Security products and modules in the ESET PROTECT portfolio, and the maturation of its detection and response solution’s (ESET Inspect) capabilities.
Notable among these upgrades is our AI-powered ESET LiveGuard feature, focusing on zero-day prevention (unknown threats), detonating suspicious packages in a safely sandboxed environment away from business endpoints to determine their behavior and intent. layered protection technologies engineered to deal with suspicious software. Synchronous with LiveGuard stands ESET LiveSense, powered by advanced machine learning and focuses on Pre-Execution, Execution and Post-Execution detection and blocking tasks.
Moreover, AI also is now fully integrated into ESET’s XDR-enabling capabilities and services boosting a business’ response posture and its resilience. AI helps round out other improvements to usability and information sharing via ESET AI Advisor -our generative AI cybersecurity assistant-, which is active in ESET Inspect, the ESET EDR solution, and enhances incident response and risk analysis from the smallest to the largest businesses and organizations. This assistance can be critical, especially bringing smaller or less mature IT teams the ability to lean on and learn from their complex detections and global knowledge base, the latter of which can be translated into actionable insights more easily by means of ESET AI Advisor’s output.
Now in 2025, ESET PROTECT Enterprise (Cloud) has demonstrated why it has been certified in the AV-Comparative Endpoint Prevention and Response (EPR) Comparative Report for the 5th time. The test uses a variety of attack scenarios, to test each product’s ability to prevent and defend against multi-stage targeted attacks, respond to threats, and provide analytical and remedial tools. It also considers the total cost of ownership (TCO) for each product.
For ESET, two areas stand out: our solution achieved the highest Prevention and Response score in this year’s EPR test, as well as a perfect 100% active response (Prevention) rate overall during Phase 1 and 2, clearly demonstrating that we stop threats from advancing via early prevention and ensuring that neither asset breaches occurred nor malicious activity went unnoticed.
Secondly, ESET PROTECT Enterprise Cloud secured the second highest Passive response (Detection) score (99.3%). But the real win for ESET users has been consistency and an ability to deliver cyber resilience to users of our comprehensive ESET PROTECT platform.
“We build our tech to provide robust defense while ensuring seamless operations at enterprises of all sizes, ESET PROTECT Enterprise highlights our dedication to innovation and excellence in cybersecurity,” said ESET Chief Sales Officer Miroslav Mikuš. “Strong prevention-oriented security foundations mean our business users can focus on the specific correlations between their business areas and the unique needs of their security environments.”
How the attack scenarios played out
The 2025 report evaluated security solutions from 10 vendors including ESET PROTECT Enterprise (Cloud). Testing covered 50 sophisticated real-world attack chains, including phishing, lateral movement, data exfiltration, and abuse of legitimate tools. ESET delivered a 100% Active response (Prevention) score.
Achieving the second highest Passive response (Detection) score highlights that we’ve remained consistent year-on-year, ranking among the top performing vendors. ESET PROTECT Enterprise includes ESET Inspect, our extended detection and response (XDR) enabling solution, providing enterprise-grade security with advanced incident response options and detailed network visibility to catch stealthy malicious behavior and sophisticated malware threats.
“ESET has once again delivered strong results in AV-Comparatives’ Endpoint Prevention and Response Test, reflecting both reliable protection and ongoing innovation. Our reports provide an independent benchmark of enterprise security capabilities, while the final choice should always be based on the specific needs of each organization,” said Andreas Clementi, Founder and CEO of AV-Comparatives.
The EPR Comparative Report is known for its rigorous testing standards, offering a transparent evaluation of how well security solutions protect organizations from real-world cyber threats and provides a useful counter point to the MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Engenuity Evaluation and both the scenarios and TTPs documented by MITRE.
Where needed, ESET PROTECT’s entire comprehensive and balanced system can be further reinforced with a managed service like ESET MDR delivered in two tiers: ESET MDR and ESET MDR Ultimate. Both tiers provide 24/7 managed detection and response service and enable maximum protection tailored to the needs of businesses of all sizes, depending on the service scope they go for.
Cost of Ownership
As a European vendor with global distribution of its data centers, and technical services in more than 40 languages, ESET takes pride in achieving competitive costs and delivering high performance. Thus, via AV-Comparatives Enterprise EPR CyberRisk Quadrant — included in the report — we strive to be as competitive as possible with high focus on breach prevention effectiveness, operational accuracy, and workflow efficiency.
“Our quest to provide strong endpoint prevention and response set out to build for cyber-resilience from the get go. EPR certified and with both geographically distributed services and infrastructure, along with technical support provided in 40 languages, ESET’s offer should be shortlisted,” said Miroslav Mikuš.
Conclusion
ESET’s results in the AV-Comparatives Endpoint Prevention and Response (EPR) Comparative Report 2025 show that our efforts are well placed, as are the investments we’ve made to ESET PROTECT Enterprise to ensure it is fit for purpose on today’s complex business and threat landscape.
