CISOs in every organization dread the possibility of sensitive company files and data being exposed. Yet the need for up-to-date, actionable threat data is huge. Consequently, many incident response teams upload company files to VirusTotal for free multi-scanning.
The problem is that VirusTotal is not private. Any samples uploaded to VirusTotal leave the organization and are essentially made available for any other researchers using the service. While multi-scanning and threat intelligence are more important than ever, this compromise of privacy is less than ideal and potentially disastrous.
However, there is an alternative.
Secure, On-Premises Multi-scanning
There are effective multi-scanning options outside of VirusTotal. MetaDefender is one of those options.
MetaDefender offers organizations the ability to reap the benefits of multi-scanning and threat intelligence privately. It is possible to deploy MetaDefender with over 30 anti-malware engines on-premises, so that files go through the multi-scanning process without ever leaving the corporate network. Alternatively, customers of MetaDefender Cloud can activate private scanning so that their samples are never shared.
Thus, organizations benefit from multi-scanning without exposing their sensitive files to public view.
Multi-scanning Results and Performance
Performance is another key factor in selecting a multi-scanning solution. MetaDefender combines up to 30 anti-malware engines (and over 30 in some packages) and scans files and archives quickly and efficiently. MetaDefender file scans often take less than 500 milliseconds.
In addition, certain MetaDefender packages have detection rates over 99.5% with minimal false positives. As a result, malware outbreaks are detected within minutes.
According to our recent measurements, MetaDefender Cloud is actually faster than VirusTotal.
| Number of File Scans | MetaDefender Cloud | VirusTotal |
| 5 | 10.59s | 1109.72s |
| 10 | 178.73s | 3411.97s |
| 15 | 176.74s | 4066.51s |
| Number of Hashes | MetaDefender Cloud | VirusTotal |
| 5 | 0.0527754s | 0.2467817s |
| 50 | 0.0549596s | 0.1314315s |
| 300 | 1.2366748s | 1.2085167s |
To learn more, see our outbreak report.
Benefits of MetaDefender vs. VirusTotal
Aside from pure performance and privacy concerns, MetaDefender is a more complete solution, offering unique technology to solve the problems brought about by the contemporary threat landscape.
| MetaDefender Cloud | VirusTotal | |
| Number of Engines | 42 | 55 |
| Data Sanitization (CDR): removes threats from documents (learn more) |
| X |
| Vulnerability Detection: detects known application vulnerabilities (learn more) |
| X |
| Expected Network Connections: analyzes IP reputation and thousands of application installations (learn more) |
| X |
| Loaded Components: all components loaded by an application (learn more) |
| X |
| Hash Lookups: quickly look up files based on hash (learn more) | ||
| Heuristics: detect new threats not identifiable by signatures (learn more) | X | |
| Privacy: private scanning so that samples are not shared (learn more) | X |
Data Sanitization (Content Disarm and Reconstruction)
Data sanitization (CDR) strips potentially malicious content, such as scripts or embedded objects, from files and reconstructs them with their original content intact. MetaDefender offers the broadest and deepest CDR on the market nearly 30 file types and over 100 file type conversions are supported.
Vulnerability Information
MetaDefender provides data on the vulnerabilities associated with each file hash.
Threat Intelligence
MetaDefender has real-time threat data to enable developers and security administrators to blacklist the latest known malicious MD5, SHA1, and SHA256 hashes.
Fast-Growing Database
On a daily basis, MetaDefender processes new unique files, adding to its fast-growing database collected from tens of thousands of frequent users.
Try a 14-day trial of MetaDefender to see how MetaDefender offers the benefits of VirusTotal with none of the typical drawbacks of relying on a third-party tool.