Microsoft Security Essentials: AV Certification Test Fails

Microsoft Security Essentials has failed to obtain certification from AV-Test - the independent German institute best known for evaluating the effectiveness of antivirus software.

In November and December 2012, a team of AV-Test continually evaluated 25 security products for home users who have their default values​​. The evaluation focuses on the three main areas of usability, protection and repair.

The evaluation of AV-Test, which aims to directly detect the latest malware to analyze and inform clients of the obtained results showed that the free offer from Microsoft does not adequately protect against malware attacks '0 days'. In this category, Microsoft Security Essentials scored an average of 71% in November, compared to industry average of 92%.

The AV-Test report said: "We always have the most recent version available to the public of all products used in the test should get whenever you in-the-cloud services We focus on .. Realistic test scenarios and the products challenged against real-world threats. "

Microsoft Security Essentials provides real-time protection for your home PC or small businesses, helping to protect against viruses, spyware and other malicious software.

Below Industry Average

The new research had the potential use of all components and protection layers to show.
Although Microsoft beats the industry average of 12 percent for "malicious removal of other components and restore critical system changes", the popular antivirus software found in other categories.

From 215,999 samples for the "detection of a representative set of malware discovered in the last two or three months category, the industry standard was 97 percent. Microsoft declined to less than the 90 percent in December and 92 percent in November.

Microsoft Hits Back

Joe Blackbird , Microsoft Malware Protection Center Program Manager,  said the company conducted a "thorough investigation" of the results, if the results warrant. He also emphasized how difficult it is for independent testing organizations to design anti-malware tests that are "consistent with real-world conditions that customers live in '.

After the results of AV-Test Microsoft used a retrospective analysis to see if one of your customers in finding one of the missing files were found in the test.

Blackbird  said "The results show that 0.0033 percent of our Microsoft Security Essentials and Microsoft Forefront Endpoint Protection clients were affected by undetected malware samples during testing. Addition, 94 percent of the malware samples not during testing did not affect our customers".