Microsoft Security Essentials Misses 39% of Malware

Barence writes "The latest tests from Dennis Publishing's security labs saw Microsoft Security Essentials fail to detect 39% of the real-world malware thrown at it. Dennis Technology Labs (DTL) tested nine home security products on a Windows 7 PC, including Security Essentials, which is distributed free to Windows users and built into Windows 8 in the form of Windows Defender. While the other eight packages all achieved protection scores of 87% or higher — with five scoring 98% or 99% — Microsoft's free antivirus software protected against only 61% of the malware samples used in the test. Microsoft conceded last year that its security software was intended to offer only "baseline" performance"."

Actual Reports

[mythosaz]

http://dennistechnologylabs.com/reports/s/a-m/2013/DTL_2013_Q4_Home.1.pdf [dennistechnologylabs.com]

Re:They'd get convicted again

[chuckugly]

It used to be pretty decent, at one point MS was trying to recruit me to work on that since I had a lot of AV development experience; I eventually declined and fed them a few resumes who they did hire, but to get to the point, they have done this in the past at least once before. Maintaining AV is an ongoing and expensive endeavor, and MS just doesn't seem to learn that lesson. It's not something they can develop and then tweak for year after year, they need to have developers and AV researchers on it 24/7, every week of the year. That's not cheap and apparently not their model.

Re:Bullshit February 2013 DennisTech

[retroworks]

http://www.geek.com/microsoft/microsoft-security-essentials-strikes-out-on-questionable-av-test-1538990/ [geek.com] Geek.com outed this testing firm last Friday for A) running MSE without applied windows updates, and B) accepting sponsorship from tested softwares.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

You've obviously not used Norton in the recent years have you.
I swear you nerds are stuck with obsolete knowledge and refuse to accept that things change.

Microsoft Security Essentials was one of the best when it first came out and is now of the worst. Things go both ways.

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[account_deleted]

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