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”.<\/p>\n
“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\u2019t do that with a monoculture and you can\u2019t do that with a malware-catching ecosystem that is not robust and diverse.”<\/p>\n
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.
\n“It\u2019s not as efficient to have one kind of weapon,” she said. “Like anything you must have that diversity. It\u2019s a weakness to just have one.”<\/p>\n
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\u2019s test. There\u2019s 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\u2019s something not right about that \u2013 we\u2019re not doing the best job for our customers.” (See\u00a0http:\/\/goo.gl\/D7hGzR<\/a>\u00a0to read the rest of this article.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It’s pretty clear what Holly Stewart was saying about MSE (Windows Defender in Windows 8 and 8.1); it was so damaging it caused Microsoft to go into political damage control mode two weeks later. Microsoft issued the following statement, not in rebuttal of what Holly Stewart said, but in an attempt to control the damage her statement had caused:<\/p>\n “We are committed to protecting our customers, and our Microsoft antimalware solutions provide strong, comprehensive defense against malicious code and attacks. We believe in these products and are proud of the protection capabilities we provide to well over 150 million computers worldwide.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Microsoft’s statement does not rebut what Holly Stewart said nor does it explain why MSE (Windows Defender on Windows 8 \u00a0and 8.1) consistently finishes at or near the bottom in virtually ever anti-virus testing done by virtually every independent testing laboratory.<\/p>\n This article, from Information Week<\/em>, published on August 21, 2013, illustrates the point I’m making – regardless of how Microsoft tries to walk back the statement made by one of it’s Malware Protection Division managers, facts remain facts:<\/p>\n Microsoft Windows Defender Stumbles In Malware Tests<\/strong> Microsoft Windows can be secured against new malware threats — provided users don’t rely on the free antivirus software that’s included with the operating system.<\/p>\n That’s one of the takeaways from an endpoint security study released this week by independent German lab AV-Test.<\/p>\n The researchers evaluated 28 antivirus products against three criteria: protection, repair and usability. Products could earn up to six points in each category for a possible total of 18 points. After tallying the results, AV-Test reported that “Bitdefender, Kaspersky Lab and Symantec lead the field while the protection packages from Avast, F-Secure and GData share fourth place.”<\/p>\n Still, all of the products earned top scores of 15.2 points or more — which stood in sharp contrast to the performance of Microsoft’s free offerings. “The test results of these [six] products alone are all nearly five points higher than the overall result obtained by Microsoft’s Windows Defender or Security Essentials when used together with the Windows Firewall,” reported AV-Test. “This proves that the use of external security solutions can lead to a massive improvement when it comes to system protection.” (Read the entire article at\u00a0http:\/\/goo.gl\/XOyGvb<\/a>\u00a0)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Note that Emsisoft uses BitDefender’s scan engine. Also note Emsisoft not included in this particular study done by AV-Test.<\/p>\n It depends on how badly you want to believe Microsoft whether you keep using MSE\/Windows Defender to protect your computer. You’ll find many Microsoft fans — running tech sites, blogs and writing newsletters — who will defend Microsoft, even when there is a ponderous amount of evidence that Microsoft has not taken very good care of MSE\/Windows Defender = and has let it decline to a point where I would not use it to protect my computer, nor would I recommend that my family members use it, nor would I recommend it to my friends.<\/p>\n Microsoft, not Cloudeight, has let you down.<\/p>\n I stand by the statements I have made about MSE\/Windows Defender. Holly Stewart’s statement is supported by evidence. Microsoft’s attempts to walk those statements back have no basis in fact and are not born out by empirical data. Microsoft’s walk-back appears to be just another public relations cover-up by Microsoft.<\/p>\n At this point in time, I would never recommend MSE\/Defender to my family or friends, and I would never use it on my own computers.<\/p>\n So why in the world would I recommend it to you?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It has been pointed out to me, and not very nicely, that I was wrong about Microsoft suggesting that users install something other than Microsoft Security Essentials. Inferred in most of the comments I’ve received, that I have somehow made a terrible error – or was just plain prevaricating by saying that Microsoft doesn’t even recommend MSE anymore\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1655,1656,1654,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6344"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6344"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6346,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6344\/revisions\/6346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAugust 21, 2013<\/p>\n![\"mse\"](\"http:\/\/thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/mse.png\")
Above, the July-August 2013 AV-Test (a German Independent testing lab), shows MSE (and Windows Defender in Windows 8 and 8.1) dead last (baseline). You can see the complete ratings chart at AV-Test here<\/a>.<\/p>\n