Microsoft Security Essentials

Microsoft Security Essentials

Standalone antivirus product Microsoft Security Essentials has caused a stir, as might be expected when the words "Microsoft" and "free" are involved. In a post on the day of its promotion, I referenced Antivirus -Test performance results from a Microsoft Security Essentials beta. We now have new results from tests directed against the final product, and overall Microsoft Security Essentials looks safe:

Malware detection: Microsoft Security Essentials detected 98.44 percent of Antivirus Tests's collected zoo of 545,034 viruses, worms, backdoors, bots and Trojans, an entirely proper showing. However, it did not do almost as well when it came to detecting adware and spyware, such as bank facts stealers, and detected only 90.95 percent of the 14,222 samples.

Microsoft Security Essentials detected 100 percent of the samples in the Wild list. Most reliable Antivirus application detects all the Wild list samples.

Self-motivated/social detection: If a program includes social detection, it can identify malware based solely on how it turns on a PC. It's a suitable feature to detect brand-new malware that does not have a signature.

Antivirus Test found that Microsoft Security Essentials does not contain any real social detection. However, Antivirus Test's Mr. Marx noted that's usually the case for standalone antivirus programs, and that you will mostly need to buy a security suite to get the feature.

Or, you can pair your free or paid standalone Antivirus program with PC Tools' free Threat fire, which adds a remarkable layer of social detection to your security arsenal.

Disinfection: Microsoft Security Essentials was able to clean up all of the active modules from 25 different test infections, meaning the malware was efficiently sterilized. The program often left behind some traces of the infection, such as registry entries or a turned-off Windows firewall.

Rootkit removal: Microsoft Security Essential did well here. It identified and removed all 25 rootkits (stealth technology used to hide other malware) used in the tests.

Scan speed: When I compared the Microsoft Security Essentials beta to other free (and finished) Antivirus application over the summer, it came in last for scanning speed. In these latest tests, Marx says that Microsoft Security Essentials scan speed "is quite OK when compared with other Antivirus products" not the fastest, but not the slowest.

False alarms: Microsoft Security Essentials did not  active any false positives for any of 600,000 known clean files used by Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office and other common applications. However, as Marx notes, most of those files come from Microsoft, so a false positive would have been amazing.

Conclusively, these results show that Microsoft Security Essentials holds its own as a free standalone antivirus application. It does not provide a firewall, behavioral detection, or other security extras as compare to the most other options in that category, but since Vista and Windows 7 already include a two-way firewall, and you can add top-notch behavioral protection with another free application, Microsoft Security Essentials looks like a upright budget choice for baseline antivirus protection.

This link takes you to the Microsoft Security Essentials download link where you can get the software to your system.

Mrs.Sadia