Microsoft Security Essentials

[Coastie]

Serious question here, all Microsoft kidding aside.

I have been a Malwarebytes user for about 18 months, and it has worked great.

I've been using Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE for short) since it was released as a beta.

MSE was rated much better than Avast! which I had used for years, and MSE also includes malware protection.

Other than MSE is from microsoft who has a less than secure history, and that there is security in double protection, what advantage is there to continue to use Malwarebytes?

[Firefox]

two levels of security is always better, if one dont get the infection hopefully the second will.....

[exile360]

Malwarebytes' generally has a much quicker response time to the newest nasties on the net. In fact, I've seen few AV's that could rival it (with only perhaps 3 exceptions, and even then, there's still nasties that MBAM catches before they do and those are Kaspersky (which I use), Avira and ESET). I am of the mind, and have been for a long time, that it's simply false hope to put all your eggs in one basket and believe that one company or group of researchers can possibly be able to catch and block every single threat on the web on any given day. Malware itself has now become a business used for identity theft, fraud and creating botnets that are used for many illegal purposes. With the malware landscape being such, I'd never trust my PC's security to just one security vendor, no matter how good they were supposed to be. A big part of what the Malwarebytes' researchers do when adding threats to the Malwarebytes' database is finding out how many, if any, major anti-virus vendors currently detect the threat. If that number is high, they don't add it to the database, but if it's low or even 0, then it gets added to Malwarebytes' for detection since it's designed to catch the threats that the others miss or fail to remove .

I'm not an employee of Malwarebytes' myself, but I've been around here for quite a while and I'm thoroughly impressed with the added layer of protection and security that Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware adds to a computer. I recommend it to everyone I know and have actually convinced many of the people I know to purchase licenses.

[Coastie]

makes sense, thanks for the info.

[exile360]

You're very welcome .

[GT500]

Other than MSE is from microsoft who has a less than secure history, and that there is security in double protection, what advantage is there to continue to use Malwarebytes?

Our software continues to target the hardest to kill malware in an attempt to provide protection above and beyond normal security software.

That being said, Microsoft Security Essentials is surprisingly effective. Until it started killing my VMware services, lagging CoD4 out, and causing VirtualBox to crash while guest operating systems were shutting down, I had no real problems with it. Fixing the CoD4 and VirtualBox issues was easy, but I will have to reinstall VMware to get it working again. Just a small bump in the road to final release, as is normal with beta tests.

MSE obviously has some room to grow and improve, as does Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware, but I believe that they both compliment each other nicely as an excellent set of free protection, and even our protection module in a licensed version of Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware makes a nice compliment to MSE.

[volvic]

Our software continues to target the hardest to kill malware in an attempt to provide protection above and beyond normal security software.

That being said, Microsoft Security Essentials is surprisingly effective. Until it started killing my VMware services, lagging CoD4 out, and causing VirtualBox to crash while guest operating systems were shutting down, I had no real problems with it. Fixing the CoD4 and VirtualBox issues was easy, but I will have to reinstall VMware to get it working again. Just a small bump in the road to final release, as is normal with beta tests.

MSE obviously has some room to grow and improve, as does Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware, but I believe that they both compliment each other nicely as an excellent set of free protection, and even our protection module in a licensed version of Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware makes a nice compliment to MSE.

I agree. I think KAV/KIS is better than Eset and Avira is in between. But KAV is such a machine hogger, that Eset AV is preferred. Use MBAM and prevx (free) too as well as keyscrambler free and hope between them that all nothing will get through; what else can you do?

[GT500]

I agree. I think KAV/KIS is better than Eset and Avira is in between. But KAV is such a machine hogger, that Eset AV is preferred. Use MBAM and prevx (free) too as well as keyscrambler free and hope between them that all nothing will get through; what else can you do?

Something like HpHosts will also add a nice layer of protection, and browsing with a more-secure web browser such as Opera, Chrome (SRWare Iron), Firefox, and Safari will help prevent the things that can install automatically. Aside from that, just reading up on the types of social engineering and scare tactics that are commonly used to trick you into believing that something malicious is legitimate are your best protection.

[exile360]

I agree GT . I use HostsMan (which includes the hosts file from HPHosts).

@volvic: Regarding Kaspersky being resource intensive, KIS can be but KAV (which is what I use), at least in its current version (2010) is extremely light. I agree though that ESET and Avira are also excellent products .

[swagger]

I agree with GT and exile360. Although I use MVPHost, it's the same type of protection. I couple that with using Firefox, Avira Antivir, and MBAM real-time protection at home. I find them both very light on resources and extremely effective.