MS offers Security Essentials to small business
How do you compete with a freebie?
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Microsoft is extending the availability of its freebie Microsoft Security Essentials to small businesses from early next month.
The application - which provides protection against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software - was launched as a basic scanner available to consumers at no charge last September. From October, small businesses running up to 10 PCs can use the technology without charge.
Microsoft explained: "This extended availability to small businesses centers on a change to the End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) that allows small business customers to legally download the software onto individually managed business PCs."
Redmond is continuing to offer its Forefront client suite, which offers improved manageability, to larger businesses. More detail on the deal can be found on Microsoft's SMB Community blog here.
The move out of the consumer market into the small business area could result in lost sales for the likes of Symantec, McAfee, Panda and Kaspersky, which use the likes of PC World to sell to small businesses.
The current stable release of MSE is version 1. In late July Microsoft released the beta version of Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0, offering a souped-up engine, better protection against web-based threats and a network intrusion detection system designed for Windows Vista and Windows 7. Early tests of the software by av-test.org praised it for good malware detection and very few false positives.
MSSE is not a resource hog but system performance showed only marginal improvements between version 1 and version 2, while real world (0day) protection was patchy. 18 out of the 25 malware attacks were blocked by Internet Explorer’s SmartScreenFilter or with traditional virus signatures, AV-test.org reports. ®
COMMENTS
RE: "How do you compete with a freebie"?
Have you actually tried Essentials?
I have been running it on 3 PCs since its first release and it has performed well and is one of the least intrusive AV applications I have ever used.
Previousy I have tried Avira, Avast, Norton, McAfee, ProtX
...no popups (like other freebie offerings)
...no subscriptions
...no inital cost
...auto updates daily
...simple and easy to use/install
For me this is one of the few freebies from Microsoft that is actually very useful and good.
have to agree with harryhedgehog
As a home user I was a devout AVG user for many years, but compared to MSSE, AVG is a total resource hog, and not very effective at it's job.
One annoyance with AVG is it's schizophrenic behaviour when an infected file gets lodged in a system restore point. Despite the infected file being completely inert (unless of course you put your machine back to that restore point) the monitoring component will periodically scream VIRUS! VIRUS!
So, you run the scanner across your entire hard disk, at the end of which it comes up "dunno what you're on about, mate. No virus here" because it can't access the System Volume Information.
Symantecs' product is less than useless. The first sign of a virus, and it curls up in a corner crying "Not in the face, not in the face!" You can tell your machine may have brushed by some 10 year old malware, because the Norton icon in the system tray is disabled, and you can't re-enable it. Oh, and the firewall in it continues to block software on your computer from accessing the net even AFTER YOU UNINSTALL IT!
Mcaffee have come up with an interesting solution. They install so much crap on your system it s-l-o-w-s... t-o... a... c-r-a-w-l. Your computer is literally too slow to catch a cold.
Sophos is an arrogant little turd. You fire up your computer, log in, and it essentially shouts "STOP EVERYTHING YOU ARE DOING! I'm updating myself." It seems to grab nearly every resource off you for the simple act of self-update. And don't get me started on the false positives!
Compared to this lot, MSSE isn't just out in front, it's lapped them several times
"How do you compete with a freebie"?
Easy answer. Just look at:
Outlook Express
Windows Media Player
Notepad / Wordpad
Internet Explorer
All free but avoided with the proverbial bargepole.
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