Microsoft Security Essentials

Microsoft Security Essentials is a new security application released for a public beta on June 23rd, 2009. They limited the number of beta participants, so it’s not available at this time. MSE builds upon the popular and effective Windows Defender (included in Windows 7) by adding anti-malware and anti-virus functionality to the application. Installation is very straightforward and like Windows Defender, it asks you to join Microsoft Spynet. The installation actually disables Windows Defender, but since the functionality is duplicated, this isn’t a problem at all. By default, it’s set to run a scan on Sunday morning around 2am but one thing I noticed was that it was not set to check for the latest definitions before running a scheduled scan. I enabled that option because one of the things I am concerned about is having out of date virus definitions. All too often I encounter a PC that’s riddled with viruses and the owner is surprised because they thought they had an anti-virus application. It turns out that they did, but the definitions had long since expired. Many end users are not aware of the fact that the applications need new definitions. In many other cases, the yearly subscription had expired. Microsoft Security Essentials is free.

The interface is pretty simple:

It gives you the basic facts and lets you know that it’s working. You can also check this in the Windows Action Center.

Another common complaint about commercial antivirus applications is performance. A few of the commercial applications have bad reputations for slowing even the newest Intel machines to a crawl. The computer feels no different after installing Security Essentials than it did before the installation. As I mentioned in a previous post, the machine I’m running Windows 7 on is no speed demon.

So far, Microsoft Security Essentials seems to be a very nice application. I do not know if it’s going to remain free of charge, but Windows Live OneCare has been discontinued, so it’s likely that it will remain free. Together with Safari or Firefox and OpenDNS, your PC should remain spyware & virus free.

Related posts:

1. Microsoft Security Essentials scans downloads too.
2. Microsoft Security Essentials finds a virus
3. Computer Status – Protected.
4. Alert: New Facebook virus.
5. You *do* have Microsoft Security Essentials, right?

Tags: Technology, windows 7