First look: Microsoft Security Essentials impresses

 

Microsoft’s new antimalware solution, Microsoft Security Essentials, is now available for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. Ars puts MSE through its paces and finds an unobtrusive app with a clean interface that protected us in the dark corners of the Internet.

After a short three-month beta program, Microsoft is officially releasing Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE), its free, real-time consumer antimalware solution for fighting viruses, spyware, rootkits, and Trojans. MSE is yet another layer of defense the company is offering to help its customers fight the threats that plague Windows PCs.

Microsoft Security Essentials is available for Windows XP 32-bit (8.61MB), Windows Vista/7 32-bit (4.28MB), and Windows Vista/7 64-bit (4.71MB). The final build number is 1.0.1611.0. Microsoft warns that MSE should not be installed alongside any other antimalware application. Indeed, MSE’s installer disables Windows Defender completely, which makes sense as it is a sort of superset to Windows Defender. It builds upon Windows Defender by offering both real-time protection and on-demand scanning for all types of malware.

Microsoft Security Essentials: The big questions

 

Microsoft’s free Security Essentials is all set to blow the anti-virus software industry apart, offering what the Redmond giant suggests is a "high-quality, free, excellent anti-malware product".

Obviously the arrival of a free product for consumers from perhaps the biggest name in software means that the major anti-malware software companies will have to compete with what could become a 300-pound gorilla.

But in interviews with Microsoft’s UK Head of Security and Privacy Cliff Evans, Windows Client Product Manager Julia Owen and, from PC security company Kaspersky, David Emm, found out exactly what the industry believes Microsoft Security Essentials will do for security on PCs.

What exactly does Microsoft Security Essentials bring to the average consumer?

MS Head of Security Cliff Evans (CE): Consumers could uninstall their other anti-virus software, install Security Essentials and know that they are going to get a high-quality, free, excellent anti-malware product.

Our primary purpose is making sure that as many people as possible have an anti-malware product and at the moment there are barriers to that.

Something we’ve focused on enormously is the idea that this is an install-and-forget program.

It will sit there quietly, update without any fuss, and it’s integrated with all the right technologies.

This isn’t a trial, this is the full product.