ESET PROTECT Enterprise Cloud Named a Certified Leader in AV Comparatives 2026 EPR Test

Independent testing validates ESET’s ability to prevent, detect and respond to complex enterprise attacks while keeping operational impact low.

Cybersecurity has moved far beyond the question of whether an organisation has antivirus installed.

Modern attacks are rarely a single event. They can begin with a phishing email, establish an initial foothold, execute malicious code, evade security controls, obtain credentials, move laterally across an environment and ultimately attempt to reach sensitive data or critical systems.

For enterprise security teams, the more important question is therefore not simply whether a security solution can identify a threat. It is whether that solution can help stop an attack from progressing, maintain visibility when an attacker gets further into the environment, support effective response, and do all of this without creating unnecessary operational issue.

This is the context behind a significant new recognition for ESET.

ESET PROTECT Enterprise Cloud has been named a Certified Leader in the 2026 Endpoint Prevention and Response (EPR) Test conducted by AV Comparatives. The independent evaluation examined enterprise security solutions against 50 targeted attack scenarios designed around realistic attack chains, with the scenarios mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise framework.

For ESET, the result provides an important external validation of the prevention and response capabilities built into ESET PROTECT Enterprise Cloud.

What makes the 2026 EPR Test significant?

The 2026 evaluation was conducted between June and August 2026 and covered 14 enterprise security solutions.

Rather than evaluating products against isolated malware samples, AV Comparatives tested complete attack workflows. The scenarios incorporated techniques including initial access, execution, persistence, privilege escalation, defence evasion, credential access, discovery, lateral movement, command and control, collection, exfiltration and impact.

The testing methodology was designed to reflect how an attacker can move through an enterprise environment rather than treating each threat as an isolated event.

AV Comparatives also introduced AI assisted techniques into the development of testing tools and scenario variations, reflecting the changing capabilities and attack patterns available to modern threat actors.

This matters because enterprise cybersecurity increasingly depends on how well different layers of protection work together throughout the attack lifecycle. Stopping an attack at the point of entry is valuable. Recognising suspicious activity after an attacker has gained a foothold is valuable.

Being able to investigate, correlate and respond to activity across an environment is equally important. The EPR methodology evaluates these capabilities together.

ESET demonstrates strong prevention and response performance

In the 2026 EPR evaluation, ESET recorded:

98.7% Active Response

99.3% Passive Response

99.0% Combined Prevention and Response Capabilities

The report also recorded no operational accuracy cost and no workflow delay cost for ESET within its standardised operational impact model. These figures require some context.

In AV Comparatives' methodology, Active Response refers to preventative action taken against an attack, while Passive Response refers to detection and actionable response when an attack has progressed further. The evaluation therefore looks at both sides of enterprise defence: the ability to stop malicious activity and the ability to provide useful detection and response when prevention alone is not enough.

ESET's result across these two dimensions produced a 99.0% combined prevention and response capability score. This is relevant in an enterprise environment, where security cannot depend on a single defensive moment.

Prevention is only the beginning

A sophisticated attacker does not necessarily need to defeat every security control.

Attackers can attempt to exploit legitimate credentials, abuse trusted applications, evade detection, move between systems and use normal administrative functionality to blend into legitimate activity.

This is why the EPR evaluation follows attacks through multiple stages.

The first stage, Endpoint Compromise and Foothold, examines activities such as initial access, execution, persistence, privilege escalation, defence evasion and credential access. The second stage, Internal Propagation, examines what happens after an attacker has gained access and begins exploring and moving through the environment. This includes discovery and lateral movement.

The third stage, Asset Breach, considers the later objectives of an attack, including collection, command and control, exfiltration and impact. This progression reflects a fundamental reality of modern cybersecurity: an organisation's defensive posture has to account for what happens before, during and after an attacker attempts to establish a foothold.

Keeping threats from moving deeper into the environment

One of the most important implications of the EPR result is the emphasis on attack progression.

A security solution should not merely produce an alert after damage has already occurred.

Where possible, it should prevent malicious activity before the attack can advance.

When prevention is not sufficient, it should provide security teams with the visibility and response mechanisms required to understand what happened and take appropriate action.

That is precisely the distinction built into the EPR methodology.

AV Comparatives defines Active Response as an automated prevention capability that can identify and prevent threats without requiring manual intervention. Passive Response addresses detection, correlation, reporting and actionable response after an attacker has entered the environment.

For organisations operating complex environments, that combination matters. Because cybersecurity is not only about stopping an individual threat. It is about disrupting the attack chain.

Security performance without unnecessary operational friction

Enterprise security also has another challenge. Protection that creates excessive disruption can become difficult to operate effectively. Security teams need to investigate alerts, manage endpoints, maintain business applications and keep employees productive. Excessive false positives, operational inaccuracies or workflow delays can increase the workload placed on security and IT teams.

AV Comparatives therefore included operational accuracy and workflow delay within its evaluation.

The report's operational accuracy testing included clean files, websites, administrator tools and scripts to determine whether security configurations interfered with legitimate activity. Workflow delay testing also examined whether security analysis created significant interruptions to normal operations.

For ESET, the report recorded None for both operational accuracy costs and workflow delay costs.

Enterprise cybersecurity has to work within the business, not against it.

Built for visibility, control and response

The AV Comparatives result also aligns with the broader architecture of ESET PROTECT Enterprise.

ESET positions the platform as an enterprise security solution combining endpoint protection, file server security, cloud based threat defence, full disk encryption and extended detection and response capabilities. Its centralised management platform provides visibility across the environment and supports security management from a unified console.

The platform is designed to give security teams more than an endpoint alert. It provides a broader operational view of the environment, helping security teams understand threats, investigate activity and take response actions.

ESET's enterprise offering also incorporates technologies designed to address different stages of the threat lifecycle, including multilayered endpoint protection, cloud based sandboxing for advanced threats and extended detection and response capabilities. This layered approach is increasingly important as enterprise environments become more distributed across endpoints, servers, cloud workloads and mobile devices.

A certification built around more than detection rates

The phrase Certified Leader is significant because AV Comparatives does not award the designation simply for achieving a high detection result.

The 2026 EPR certification requires strong performance across Active and Passive Response while maintaining low operational impact suitable for enterprise scale deployments. According to AV Comparatives, Certified Leader status indicates leadership level prevention, detection and response capabilities demonstrated through a broad range of realistic attack scenarios and enterprise focused evaluation criteria.

The 2026 evaluation resulted in 11 certified solutions out of the 14 tested. The significance for ESET is therefore not simply that the company received another cybersecurity recognition. It is that ESET PROTECT Enterprise Cloud successfully met a demanding independent evaluation designed around the realities of modern enterprise attacks. 

Why this matters for organisations

For CISOs, IT leaders and security teams, cybersecurity decisions increasingly involve more than selecting a product with strong malware detection.

 Organisations need to consider questions such as:

''Can the platform prevent an attack before it progresses?

Can it identify suspicious activity if prevention does not stop the attack?

Can security teams understand the sequence of events?

Can they investigate and respond efficiently?

Can the security platform operate without creating unnecessary disruption?

Can it provide visibility across a complex environment?''

These are the kinds of questions that enterprise security teams have to answer when building a resilient security architecture. The 2026 EPR evaluation provides one independent data point for that decision making process. And for ESET, the results provide evidence that ESET PROTECT Enterprise Cloud is designed not only to defend endpoints, but to support prevention, detection and response throughout a broader attack chain.

From endpoint protection to cyber resilience

The modern enterprise cannot afford to think of cybersecurity as a perimeter problem.

Employees work across multiple locations. Applications operate in the cloud. Data moves between endpoints, servers and business systems. Attackers can use legitimate credentials and trusted tools. Artificial intelligence is lowering barriers for both defenders and attackers. The defensive model therefore has to evolve.

Organisations need security controls that work together. They need visibility, prevention, detection, response. And they need these capabilities to function without unnecessarily disrupting the organisation they are designed to protect.

That is where the significance of ESET PROTECT Enterprise Cloud's latest independent recognition lies. The 2026 AV Comparatives EPR Test evaluated how enterprise security solutions performed when confronted with realistic, multi stage attack scenarios.

ESET PROTECT Enterprise Cloud achieved 98.7% Active Response, 99.3% Passive Response and 99.0% combined prevention and response capabilities, while recording no operational accuracy cost and no workflow delay cost in the report's operational impact model.

The result reinforces a principle that increasingly defines effective enterprise cybersecurity:

Protection should not stop at detection. It should help prevent attacks, expose what gets through and enable organisations to respond before threats become business disruption.

ESET: Cybersecurity. Progress. Protected.

For more than three decades, ESET has focused on developing technology designed to protect organisations against evolving digital threats.

Today, ESET PROTECT Enterprise provides a centralized enterprise security platform combining multilayered endpoint protection with capabilities for threat defense, visibility, detection and response.

The latest AV Comparatives EPR recognition adds another independent reference point to that work.

ESET PROTECT Enterprise Cloud is a 2026 AV Comparatives Certified Leader in Endpoint Prevention and Response. For organisations evaluating their next step in enterprise cybersecurity, the conversation is no longer simply about having protection in place. It is about whether that protection is prepared for the attack chain. And whether it can help the organization stay protected as the threat landscape continues to evolve.

Explore ESET PROTECT Enterprise:ESET PROTECT Enterprise for Nigeria

Read the independent AV Comparatives 2026 EPR Test:AV Comparatives Endpoint Prevention & Response Test 2026

Learn more about ESET's enterprise security capabilities:ESET PROTECT Enterprise