MSE 1.0 was also able to block 67% of zero-day (0-day) malware attacks from the Internet, including email threats, a little under the industry’s average of 75%.Īt the same time, in terms of Dynamics Detection Testing, the solution’s ability to block malicious code on or post execution, MSE scored an average of 69%, more than the industry’s average of 63%. MSE 1.0 detected all the widespread malware out of 26,964 samples used, and an average of 95.6% of 1,359,862 malicious code samples considered a representative set of malware. In terms of protection, AV-Test threw a range of threats against MSE 1.0, including viruses, worms, and Trojan horses.

As it turns out, MSE offers users immensely more than what its price tag, or lack thereof, promises. The score of Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0 wasn’t one of the highest, 4 points short of the maximum, but still, the Redmond company’s security solution managed to hold its own against full security suites.įact is, that even when the software giant introduced Morro, the codename used for what was to become Microsoft Security Essentials, MSE was presented as a basic security product.

There were products that failed to hit the total score of 12 necessary to receive the AV-Test certification, most notably McAfee Internet Security 2010 with a score of just 10.5 and Trend Micro Internet Security Pro 2010 with 11.5. According to AV-Test, all security solutions had access to updates as well as to any Cloud services used to enhance their capabilities.

In fact, AV-Test certified all the products tested as long as they managed to achieve an overall score at least 12, with a maximum of 6 points granted for each of the areas evaluated: protection, repair and usability.ģ2-bit (x86) copies of Windows 7 were used for all the tests, which involved only the latest versions of the AV products. Version 1.0 of Microsoft Security Essentials was among the 13 products which received the AV-Test certification with a total score of 14, out of 18 possible. Microsoft Security Essentials, a free security offering designed for genuine versions of Windows platforms, has received an accolade from AV-Test recently, after it managed to pass the same range of tests as commercial antivirus products.Ī evaluated no less than 19 security solutions in the second quarter of 2010, namely in April, May and June.

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