Microsoft Security Essentials rated high in Malware removal tests

Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE), the free anti-virus software released by Microsoft got good reviews so far. This is a free product and it may not have all the bells and whistles you get from the commercial products, but it scores good in malware removal tests conducted by AV-Comparitives tests.

The AV-Comparitives October 2009 report contains malware removal/cleaning capabilities test. Sixteen products have been tested using Windows XP Professional SP3 32bit computers. A point to note is that the test only focuses on the malware removal/cleaning capabilities of the security products installed on an infected system. The detection rates and protection capabilities of the software are ignored for the test.

Microsoft Security Essentials scored good in the testing, out of the sixteen anti-virus programs tested only three programs (Microsoft Security Essentials, Norton and eScan) scored good in removal of malware and removal of leftovers. None of the products tested scored very good for the above tests.

The ratings were given as “Advanced+”, “Advanced” and “Standard” based on removal capabilities. Six software out of the sixteen tested got the Advanced+ rating, these include , eScan, Symantec, Microsoft (MSE), F-Secure, Kaspersky, Bitdefender. MSE is the only free anti-virus which got the Advanced+ rating, other free anti-virus software like AVG, Avast got the Advanced rating.

Microsoft Security Essentials beat other free competitors AVG, Avast and Avira in these tests. MSE is a solid free anti-virus product, better than some of the paid apps.

Download MSE. Via DownloadSquad