Microsoft Now Recommends You Use A Third-Party Antivirus?

[6Foot2]

Link: Goodbye Microsoft Security Essentials: Microsoft Now Recommends You Use a Third-Party Antivirus

[SYNACK]

Grrr, back to bloated os choking nonsense to slow down viruses.

[Arthur]

That HowToGeek article is a little misleading.

 

Now, Microsoft has said it sees Security Essentials as merely the first layer of protection, advising customers to use additional, third-party antivirus - although the company stressed that wasn't because the product wasn't good enough to stand on its own.

 

Holly Stewart, senior program manager of the Microsoft Malware Protection Center, told Dennis Technology Labs that Microsoft made a decision to switch to what it calls a "baseline strategy".

 

"We had an epiphany a few years ago, back in 2011, where we realised we had a greater calling and that was to protect all Microsoft customers," she said. "But you can’t do that with a monoculture and you can’t do that with a malware-catching ecosystem that is not robust and diverse."

 

Rather than focus on making its own antivirus the best in the business, Stewart said Microsoft was "doing everything we can to protect against real threats" and passing data on those threats to antivirus makers, so multiple parties can target the problems.

 

"It’s not as efficient to have one kind of weapon," she said. "Like anything you must have that diversity. It’s a weakness to just have one."

 

Previously, Microsoft would spend resources trying to improve Security Essentials' performance in tests. "We used to have part of our team directed towards predicting test results and figuring out what might be in someone’s test. There’s always a cost to that," she said. "If they are doing that work they are not looking at those threats that are affecting our customers. We always felt that was wrong. There’s something not right about that – we’re not doing the best job for our customers."

 

The company decided to stop that practice and put its effort elsewhere.

 

"We put half of those people on focusing on what we call prevalent threats. We developed this new telemetry to look for emerging threats - sort of an early notification system that new threats were emerging. We had this group of folks start focusing on those threats and we saw that it increased our protection service level for our customers."

 

In practice, it means Microsoft is focusing on tracking emerging threats and sharing that data within the security industry, saying that's a more meaningful way to protect customers. (Source)

[glennda]

I have recently been introduced (today) to f-Secure - from the stats is looks very good! (low resource usage, low false positive, low slip through)

[synaesthesia]

Biggest positive from MSE for me has always been that it's very hands-off. Install, update, forget. So many other free AV packages either got in the way (AVG) or keep begging for something (Avast), not something I'd want to put on a machine I was sorting out for someone. Although it always amazed me how often the most infected machines are "protected" by fully paid up memberships to crap like McAfee or Norton 360.

[elsiegee40]

Rude words!

 

Now I have to decide what to use instead!

 

I like MSE.. it just works... and it's free... and it doesn't eat to much resource. I have it on 3 Win 7 machines at home.

[Soulfish]

I have recently been introduced (today) to f-Secure - from the stats is looks very good! (low resource usage, low false positive, low slip through)

 

I actually use F-Secure on my own PCs at home. Was low cost and from the research I did performed very well. In the past 12 months of using it I've found it's worked well for me

[TheScarfedOne]

Likewise....rude words here too! Where does this leave System Centre Endpoint, which is the same product?Grrrr, I really dont want to have to change...and like many others rely on MSE on home machines...

[Arthur]

Now I have to decide what to use instead!

Or you could carry on using it? The only thing that has changed is that Microsoft doesn't spend time making MSE look good in AV tests.

 

Baseline's not bad

She said that shouldn't be seen as Microsoft leaving customers unprotected, claiming the company is merely focusing on the most serious threats.

 

"Baseline does not equal bad," she said. "We provide a high-quality, high-performing service to our customers and if they choose not to buy [antivirus] on Windows 8... we want to get those people protected."

 

Stewart stressed the change in approach had nothing to do with anti-trust concerns surrounding bundling its own antivirus with Windows.

 

^ It's worth reading the entire PC Pro article that @DaveP's link references...

 

www.pcpro.co.uk/news/security/384394/microsoft-security-essentials-is-designed-to-be-bottom-of-the-antivirus-rankings

[Arthur]

Where does this leave System Centre Endpoint, which is the same product?

I don't know about you, but after switching from Symantec Endpoint Protection to System Center Endpoint Protection on school PCs, the latter seems to detect (and successfully remove) more malware and trojan's than the former does. It's also worth mentioning that these are the same trojan's that conveniently slip past the VIPRE scanner on our SmoothWall proxy.

 

No anti-virus software is perfect, which is why you need multiple layers of protection. e.g. standard users accounts for everyone, keep OS fully patched, enable AppLocker, block adverts, install EMET, use a sandboxed browser like Chrome/IE, keep plug-ins up-to-date or uninstall them if not required etc. etc.

[sonofsanta]

I don't know about you, but after switching from Symantec Endpoint Protection to System Center Endpoint Protection on school PCs, the latter seems to detect (and successfully remove) more malware and trojan's than the former does. It's also worth mentioning that these are the same trojan's that conveniently slip past the VIPRE scanner on our SmoothWall proxy.

 

Same - and administering SCEP has been much less painful that Symantec was, which seemed to need mothering a lot.

 

Hope they don't get rid, because it's a much cheaper option, but not a beggar's-choice either.

[Quackers]

Is Microsoft Forefront Endpoint Protection the same product but with a Business badge?

[synaesthesia]

Yes, pretty much; and set up to be managed from the central SCCM server.