Security Essentials 1.0

The successor to Live OneCare has already been released by Microsoft known as Security Essentials 1.0. SE 1.0 was initially labeled as Morro, has retained the core features of OneCare but has removed some of its bloated features which includes the firewall, performance tuning, backup and restore options. The selling point for Security Essentials 1.0 is its price tag — “free”, yes it doesn’t cost anything. Live OneCare showed a lot of promise but the price tag wasn’t appealing enough to abandon the more branded, stable security applications coming from Norton, McAfee, and the rest of security vendors. Microsoft being a newcomer in the security applications market couple with the reputation of Windows Vista didn’t help make this application a success.

Microsoft isn’t competing with Symantec and other large security vendors, instead, their Security Essentials means they are now competing with vendors like AVG, and PCTools (which I am a big fan of).

During the limited public beta of Security Essentials, 75,000 public beta testers were able to see the potential of this free security app from Microsoft. The security settings as reported by testers say that the Security Essentials has the baseline features found in any security app.

The main features of SE 1.0 is its usage of both definition file and real-time based defenses against viruses, spyware and also offers rootkit protection. The application rely heavily on Microsoft SpyNet for its program’s reputation based detection and software signature based detections. Microsoft SpyNet was first introduced in the beleaguered Windows Vista operating system and later on extended and found on Windows 7.

You would have the ability to choose between two SpyNet membership options. The basic membership is simply sending Microsoft the detected software’s origin,the response and actions taken. The advanced membership role includes the parts of information on your hard drive for the software being questioned. Aside from these information, personal data can actually be sent over to Microsoft, although the software giant promise and has noted that they are not going to use the personal data neither are they going to contact you.

That doesn’t sound good and I wouldn’t want to try out Security Essentials when personal data is being sent over to Microsoft. To note, there is now way to remove yourself from the Microsoft SpyNet subscription when using Security Essentials 1.0

Security Essentials is clean and simple to use as shown in the image below:

The tabs represent the “home”, “update”, “history” or “settings”. The home tab is where the scan options can be found like making a quick, full or custom scan. The custom scan allows you to scan folders but doesn’t give you additional things to scan like “rootkits only”, “virus only”, etc. The “Update” tab displays the updates made on the system and whether the security data files are up to date or not. The “History” tabs shows the infections, quarantines, things found and actions taken by the application. The “Settings” page is where you configure that various settings for the Security Essentials 1.0.

The Security Essentials performs decent enough where quick scans take 30 seconds or less, the full scan can finish in around 1.5 to 2 hours. The Security Essentials results doesn’t come up to par with free security settings like PCTools and AVG.

Security Essentials is worth taking a look, but why would I choose to use it over PCTools, or AVG both of which have won so many awards, have performed well on my computer, has free version, and is tested and relied upon by millions and millions of users over the years. Plus, it doesn’t send out personal data like the SE 1.0

Do you want to use this application? I would suggest to consider but take a hard look at PCTools and AVG. By the way, I am currently using tools from PCTools.

Image from Security Essentials.