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October 05 2009
Microsoft Security Essentials antivirus
The just-released beta of Microsoft Security Essentials - not yet available in the UK - is a solid, free tool that protects against malware while taking up few system resources and staying out of your way as much as possible.
When Security Essentials sees a potentially malicious file that doesn’t match known malware, it contacts Microsoft servers for additional analysis. The feature likely affords greater protection owing to the use of the latest signatures online, but it may also introduce some delay if Security Essentials has to wait for a response.
Microsoft Security Essentials’ ability to detect and block malware was neither especially good nor particularly bad. Its 97.8 percent overall detection rate put it in fourth; but it did well in proactive tests, which use two- and four-week-old signature databases to simulate how well a program detects new, unknown malware. Its results of 52 percent and 43.8 percent, respectively, were second only to those of the top-ranked Avira Antivir Personal, our overall winner.
Microsoft Security Essentials put up no false positives (flagging of benign software), and it got a near-perfect score overall in detecting and cleaning rootkits and malware infections. It detected and disabled every infection, and although it left behind several changes to the Registry and other areas (as every free app did), they couldn’t cause further harm.
The just-released beta of Microsoft Security Essentials - not yet available in the UK - is a solid, free tool that protects against malware while taking up few system resources and staying out of your way as much as possible.
This is set-it-and-forget-it software that handles the basic dangers, but doesn’t try to compete with big-boy security suites such as those built by Symantec, McAfee or Panda. So you won’t find extras such as a firewall, identity protection, anti-phishing technology or anti-spam. Instead, Security Essentials focuses on protecting you against viruses, spyware, rootkits and similar dangers, and does a very good job of it.
Installation and setup
Security Essentials comes in versions for Windows XP and Windows Vista (the Vista version will also work with Windows 7). Both are light downloads: The 32-bit Vista download weighs in at 4.8 MB, the 64-bit Vista version at 3.8MB and the XP version (there’s only a 32-bit version) comes in at 7.6 MB.
Installation of the 32-bit Vista version on our machine took less than five minutes and was about as simple as an installation can be. There is one caveat, though: You need to have a validated copy of Windows. Not surprisingly, Microsoft’s software won’t work with pirated or non-validated versions.Once installation is complete, the application downloads the latest anti-malware definitions. It then launches a quick system scan that took under ten minutes on my system.
Security Essentials uses a new feature called the Dynamic Signature Service, which employs a variety of techniques to check for malware even before that malware’s specific signature has been identified. Microsoft says Security Essentials emulates the behaviour of programs before they run, and uses the signature created during the process to look for any suspicious behaviour or patterns of suspicious behaviour, such as starting an unexpected network connection or trying to modify certain protected sections of Windows. The Dynamic Signature Service then determines what action to take against the potential malware.
Once the software has scanned your system, you don’t need to do anything else, unless it finds malware that it wants to kill or quarantine. New anti-malware signatures are automatically downloaded daily, using the Windows Update engine; you can also have the software to check for the latest definitions manually. Security Essentials also provides real-time protection, so it watches your system as you use it and warns you if you’re downloading malware or if your system has been infected. The software also scans your system once a week by default. You can manually override the defaults and set up specific days and times to perform the scans; more about this later.
Microsoft Security Essentials in action
Scans and updates are scheduled to run when your PC is idle, although you can run a scan manually. They are given a low priority by the operating system, further reducing their impact on your PC. In addition, CPU throttling is used to ensure that the software doesn’t use more than 50 percent of your CPU.
When Security Essentials finds an infection on your system, you can have it immediately take action against the threat, or you can click Show Details, at which point you’ll be shown as much information as the software has about the threat.
When you lick on the Clean Computer option, Security Essentials will either delete the file or quarantine it, depending on the nature of the threat.
Easy interface
Most of the time, that’s all the interaction you’ll have with Security Essentials - there’s very little need to open the program for any other reason. However, if you do open it to, for example, customise its actions in some way, you’ll find a very simple interface that to a certain extent mimics the look of Windows Defender.
There are four tabs - Home, Update, History and Settings. Home shows you the status of the software and your system and lets you perform a scan; Update shows you the status of definition updates and lets you update them manually; History shows you a history of the actions the software has taken.
Settings lets you change most aspects of how the program works, including when to perform scans, the type of scan to perform (Quick or Full), what actions to take when an infection is detected and the ability to exclude files, locations and processes from scans. There’s actually little reason to change any of the defaults, although it’s nice to know you can.
When customising, keep in mind that a Full scan takes significantly longer than a Quick scan. On my system a Quick scan took under ten minutes; a Full scan took more than an hour.
There are anti-malware applications that offer far more customisation than does Microsoft Security Essentials. Avast!, for example, lets you finely tune the sensitivity of its scans, so that you can make them more or less aggressive; you can’t do that with Security Essentials. Most people won’t miss it, but security tweakers may not be satisfied with the level of customisation available.
How safe does it keep you?
Until Security Essentials is put through its paces by antivirus labs, there’s no definitive way to know how it stacks up against other applications. However, it shares the same engine and signatures as other Microsoft anti-malware products, including OneCare, the enterprise-focused Forefront and the monthly Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool. Therefore, looking at how OneCare compares should give some kind of guidance.
In its earliest days, OneCare did not perform impressively in anti-malware tests, but over time that has changed. It now ranks near the top of security software, according to the independent AV-Comparatives website. The site regularly tests antivirus tools, and its latest tests of 16 applications, done in May, ranks OneCare as only one of three tools given the top Advanced+ designation (the other two were Kaspersky and ESET NOD32). It also tied for second place for its proactive detection of new malware and was the only software rated as giving very few false alarms.
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