You have read it here before – Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) – is my anti-virus and anti-malware program of choice. In fact, it has been on all four of the systems I maintain at the house since it was in beta the first time.
Well the latest beta run has wrapped up and the 2.0 version of MSE is now available for you to download and put to work right away.
You can find the new download at http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/default.aspx
So what does the 2.0 version bring to your system that did not exist in the previous version?
- The Windows Firewall is now integrated and you can adjust file and activity monitoring from MSE.
- Network Inspection System. This new feature keeps an eye on the network traffic moving in and out of your system utilizing the Windows Filtering Program in Windows Vista and Windows 7. That of course means Windows XP users will not be able to benefit from this feature since it is not on that system. They can still use the software it will just not have this ability. Maybe another good reason to upgrade from Windows XP?
- New and improved protection engine. The updated engine offers heuristic scanning which looks for behaviors that are typical of threats. In the previous version of MSE the program depended upon signatures in the updates to detect threats.
As a 2.0 release this adds some terrific features that enhance MSE and the good job it already does and all of it for free.
Personally, I am not sure why most people wouldn’t run this on their systems. I can vouch that I have been running it since last year when it came out, about 18 months, and it has protected our systems without skipping a beat.
It is also the program I install on computers when I work on them for friends and clients instead of them continuing to pay for signature updates from the paid programs.
