Microsoft Security Essentials

Microsoft Security Essentials

Microsoft Security Essentials is an antivirus software that provides protection against computer viruses, spyware, rootkits, and trojan horses. The license agreement allows home users and small businesses to install and use the product free-of-charge. MSE provides real-time protection, constantly monitoring activities on the computer, scanning new files as they are created or downloaded, and disabling detected threats. It replaces Windows Live OneCare, a discontinued commercial subscription-based AV service.

About Microsoft Security Essentials in brief

Summary Microsoft Security EssentialsMicrosoft Security Essentials is an antivirus software that provides protection against computer viruses, spyware, rootkits, and trojan horses. The license agreement allows home users and small businesses to install and use the product free-of-charge. It replaces Windows Live OneCare, a discontinued commercial subscription-based AV service, and the free Windows Defender, which only protected users from spyware until Windows 8. MSE provides real-time protection, constantly monitoring activities on the computer, scanning new files as they are created or downloaded, and disabling detected threats. According to a March 2012 report by anti-malware specialist OPSWAT, MSE was the most popular AV product in North America and the second most popular in the world. On 18 November 2008, Microsoft announced plans for a free consumer security product, codenamed Morro. By 17 June 2009, Morro was revealed as the official name of Microsoft’s official AV protection product, Microsoft Security Essential. The product received generally positive reviews praising its user interface, low resource usage and freeware license. It secured AV-TEST certification in October 2009, having demonstrated its ability to eliminate all widely encountered malware. It lost that certification inOctober 2012; in June 2013,. MSE achieved the lowest possible protection score, zero. On 30 September 2011, a faulty definition update caused the product to incorrectly tag Google Chrome as malware. On a computer running Windows Vista or Windows 7, it requires a 1 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM, a computer monitor with a display resolution of at least 800 × 800 pixels, 200MB of free hard disk space and a stable Internet connection.

Microsoft stopped producing automatic definition updates for Windows XP on 14 July 2015. MSE is built upon the same foundation as other Microsoft security products. It does not have the personal firewall component of OneCare and the centralized management features of Forefront Endpoint Protection. If the report matches a newly discovered malware threat with an unreleased virus definition, the new definition will be downloaded to remove the threat. If no response is received within ten minutes, suspected threats are handled according to the default actions defined in the application’s settings. Depending on those settings, it may also create System Restore checkpoints before removing the detected malware. MSE originally ran on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. versions 4. 5 and later do not run onWindows XP and Windows 8 and later versions, which have built-in AV components known as Windows Defender. The product is free to download and install from the Microsoft Security Portal website. It is available in black, white, and silver versions. It can be downloaded for free from Microsoft’s Microsoft Annual Edition and is available for download from the Microsoft Security Packet and the Microsoft Announcement and Microsoft Safari Packer and for download and download from the Microsoft Security Packing Packed Pak.