Microsoft Security Essentials BETA Review

Microsoft Security Essentials(MSE) is an free antivirus software developed by microsoft that provides protection against differents types of cyber threats(trojans, rootkits, spyware, adware) for windows based workstation(WinXP,WinVista,Win7 both 32bit and 64bit) it was so developed to replace Windows Live OneCare.

MSE received positive reviews when it was first released almost a year ago and currently they have new version(v2) which is currently in BETA and I am presenting my review on this BETA version. I know that my review might not have any much impact on the final version of MSE but this is the first time I have tried MSE and thats why gave a thought of reviewing it.

Some of the new features included in this version were :

Windows Firewall integration – During setup, Microsoft Security Essentials will now ask if you would like to turn the Windows Firewall on or off.

Enhanced protection for web-based threats – Microsoft Security Essentials now integrates with Internet Explorer to provide protection against web-based threats.

New protection engine – The updated anti-malware engine offers enhanced detection and cleanup capabilities with better performance.

Network inspection system – Protection against network-based exploits is now built in to MSE (This feature is not available for WinXP platform because this feature requires Windows Filtering Platform which is only available in WinVista and Win7)

I downloaded the installer from here (you have to have a Windows Live ID/Hotmail ID so that you can download the BETA version). I installed MSE on my Win7 Ultimate 32Bit system. The installer size is about 8 MB the installation also requires you to run a genuine copy of Windows and installation takes a minute or a two to complete and requires a reboot to load the drivers. After insallation the GUI of MSE is as below

I ran an update and it downloaded about 60MB of database updates after the updates were applied I rebooted my PC(Note: Not at all required to reboot) just to make sure everything worked fine. GUI is very much user friendly I didn't find any difficulty in maneuvering through the GUI.

Main Product Features:

• Realtime Protection : It protects your computer in real time so can also be used even as a standalone application for providing basic but sufficient protection.

• Malware Removal : It also provides removal of the detected malwares.

• Schedule Scanning : Provides scheduled scanning of your computer(can also be disabled if the user doesn't want to)

Perfomances:

MSE is very much light on system resources I didn't feel any slow downs while testing it on my system. I tested MSE v2 BETA on my Core2Duo processor running Win7 32bit Ultimate with 1 GB of RAM. When I saw in task manager it ran three processes

1. msseces.exe (Microsoft Security Client User Interface)
2. MsMpEng.exe (Antimalware Service Executable)
3. Nissrv.exe (Microsoft Network Inspection System)

The Nissrv.exe is not be available in WinXP

Test against malware:

I collected some malware samples (68 to be precise) over the past 5 days and thought of giving it a shot against MSE. I performed the test by first copying those 68 malware samples to a Test named folder in the desktop and then turned off the realtime protection of MSE and then I scanned the folder by MSE through its custom scan. MSE was able to detect 54 out 68(79.41%) of malware samples. I gave remove as the action to be performed for the detected threats. I rescanned the same folder to make sure that it didn't missed any files to be scanned. Considering that these samples are very much zero-day it performed medicore in this test but it might detect a few more when the leftover samples would be executed in realtime. My test was just an ondemand type, no sample was executed at all.

Pros:

• FREE
• Low memory usage
• Faster scans
• Realtime protection
• Automatic Updates
• Good detection rates

Cons:

• No manually quarantine option

BottomLine:

MSE is slowly gaining ground on being one of the top freeware product which was earlier ruled by likes of Avast, AVG and Avira. It is constantly performing good in recent tests like AVComparatives and many others independent test. I have been playing with this BETA for quite sometime now and I am quite impressed with it. Considering that I have fairly old computer(running Core2Duo processor) I still felt the computer was very much fast and didn't have any sortof interference in my normal routine work I even installed on one of my relatives computer running a P4 processor with 512MB of DDR1 RAM. It is very much stable and hardly found any notable bugs.