Microsoft Security Essentials
- Submitted by: geislert
- Views: 786
- Category: Other
- Date Submitted: 09/23/2010 06:57 PM
- Pages: 4
- Report this Essay
Microsoft Security Essentials
On 23 Jun 2009 Microsoft release Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is a client based malware service that can run on XP, Vista, and Windows 7. MSE, competes with the likes of Symantec and other well established companies in the anti-virus market. This paper will examine the types of attacks it can protect you against, how MSE works, and its limitations. To determine were MSE stands AV-Comparative 2009 annual report will be used in conjunction with the most recent February 2010 report to extract details.
AV-Comparatives are an independent, non-profit, anti-virus testing organization who has published annual reports since 2004. Their objective based testing is the basis for this report and should be reviewed prior to making your own decision. AV-Comparatives pre-screened numerous vendor products to find the top 16-20 vendors to test and MSE was one of the products selected. They then compared 16 products in 2009 report to determine how the each product affected system performance, detection, and false positive rates (AV-Comparatives, 2009). The individual tests were scored worst to best as “standard”, “advanced”, and “advanced-plus”
The first test determined how well each product could detect malware using default settings. MSE scored “standard” in this test 2009 but upon further research into specifically why, AV-Comparatives updated the rating to “advanced” (AV-Comparatives, 2010). MSE while respectable missed 2% of malware compared to Symantec, malware scripts being its weakest performance at 77% detection rate. Over all MSE missed about 40,000 of 1.2 million known malware. The next test modified each programs setting to the highest level of detection.
Essentials won the category because of its very low false positive rate that was a third of the NOD32 who took second place. The fact that you have to change setting from defaults, which many users never attempt, means that this is less important...
On 23 Jun 2009 Microsoft release Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is a client based malware service that can run on XP, Vista, and Windows 7. MSE, competes with the likes of Symantec and other well established companies in the anti-virus market. This paper will examine the types of attacks it can protect you against, how MSE works, and its limitations. To determine were MSE stands AV-Comparative 2009 annual report will be used in conjunction with the most recent February 2010 report to extract details.
AV-Comparatives are an independent, non-profit, anti-virus testing organization who has published annual reports since 2004. Their objective based testing is the basis for this report and should be reviewed prior to making your own decision. AV-Comparatives pre-screened numerous vendor products to find the top 16-20 vendors to test and MSE was one of the products selected. They then compared 16 products in 2009 report to determine how the each product affected system performance, detection, and false positive rates (AV-Comparatives, 2009). The individual tests were scored worst to best as “standard”, “advanced”, and “advanced-plus”
The first test determined how well each product could detect malware using default settings. MSE scored “standard” in this test 2009 but upon further research into specifically why, AV-Comparatives updated the rating to “advanced” (AV-Comparatives, 2010). MSE while respectable missed 2% of malware compared to Symantec, malware scripts being its weakest performance at 77% detection rate. Over all MSE missed about 40,000 of 1.2 million known malware. The next test modified each programs setting to the highest level of detection.
Essentials won the category because of its very low false positive rate that was a third of the NOD32 who took second place. The fact that you have to change setting from defaults, which many users never attempt, means that this is less important...