About the Microsoft Security Essentials Public Beta

Robert | Jun 21, 2009 | Comments

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Recently there has been quite a bit of turmoil about project “Morro,” as Microsoft announced last November that they would halt development of Live OneCare and replace it with Morro, a new security solution. And now, right before the retirement date of OneCare, Microsoft has announced that it will release a public beta of Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) on June 23rd (the beta will be updated over the summer), OneCare’s replacement. According to Microsoft, MSE will be a basic, light-weight security solution that has no performance impact on Windows, and to top it off, free. According to a Microsoft representative, MSE will be what we have all waited for:

To address consumer demand for quality anti-malware protection that’s easy to get and doesn’t slow down system performance, Microsoft Security Essentials has been designed as a no-cost anti-malware solution that provides consumers with quality protection from threats including viruses, spyware, rootkits and trojans. It will be offered directly from Microsoft and has been designed to be hassle-free and is focused on delivering quality protection that’s easy to use.

MSE also has very low system requirements:

For Windows XP, a PC with a CPU with clock speed of at least 500MHz and at least 256MB of RAM
For Windows Vista and Windows 7, a PC with a CPU with clock speed of at least 1.0GHz and at least 1GB of RAM
VGA (display): 800×600 or higher
Storage: 140MB of available hard-disk space
An Internet connection is required for installation and to download the latest virus and spyware definitions.
Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher, or Mozilla Firefox 2.0 or higher.

MSE will coincide with the release of Windows 7 later this year (final release date could be as early as September), and will be completely free and available to all users (regardless of architecture) of Windows XP (XP only gets an x86 version), Vista, and Windows 7, assuming that the user passes a Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) check. Unfortunately, MSE will not have a managed firewall, no photo backup capability, and cannot manage a home network; however, it is built on the same trusted framework of other Microsoft products such as OneCare (of course) and Windows Defender, so it appears to be quite promising.

Microsoft decided to create MSE because too many PCs are unprotected. Most OEM PCs only come with a trial version of a protection suite, and the rare full versions usually expire within a year or two. Even worse, most users disable the free solutions provided with Windows, such as Windows Defender and Windows Firewall. MSE has emerged to protect those who are vulnerable, by integrating itself with the other free solutions by Microsoft while adding a degree of real-time protection due to its new feature called Dynamic Signature Service (DSS), which submits unknown viruses to Microsoft’s servers and checks to see if a solution has been provided. Best of all, MSE is quite silent, running entirely in the background, almost never annoying the user with pop-ups, and only scanning during idle times. The only catch is persuading the OEMs to include MSE instead of a third party suite. Considering that these PC manufacturers make money by preloading paid security solutions, it will be interesting to see how Microsoft tries to entice the larger makers to include MSE in their line-ups, or whether Microsoft succeeds whatsoever.

Nonetheless, MSE could prove to be one of the best solutions on the market considering that over 450 million users regularly use Windows Update. Add to that figure the amount of users on the SpyNet service, the new DSS, Windows Defender, and the doomed OneCare, Microsoft has a tremendous amount of telemetry to use in protecting its userbase. In fact, Microsoft plans to publish new signature updates three times a day, along with the core engine every month.

Of course, the real test will be whether or not these massive amounts of virus signatures will provide a highly effective degree of detection; although, so far, MSE looks as though it may take over the security market.

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