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05 October 2010, 15:19

Microsoft Security Essentials - 1 year on

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First released one year ago, Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) was created in the hope that a free, simple to install and use, anti-malware program for the market dominant operating system would significantly reduce the threat level in that ecosystem. As Microsoft said at the time:

“By making Microsoft Security Essentials easy to get and easy to use, Microsoft hopes to encourage broader adoption of anti-virus protection across the consumer audience, which in turn will help increase security across the entire Windows ecosystem.”

On MSE' first birthday Microsoft has released some statistics gathered during the year as a yardstick of the effectiveness of that strategy.

In a post on the Windows Security blog, Microsoft Windows Marketing Group Manager Eric Foster says that some 31 million customers in 74 countries are now using MSE. Over the year, reports to the Microsoft Malware Protection Center (MMPC) show that MSE detected nearly 400 million threats with customers choosing to remove over 366 million of those threats.

On the Microsoft TechNet blogs Joe Faulhaber says that the US has the highest install base, followed by Brazil, where Autorun and Conficker are reported as the top two threats. Perhaps not surprisingly the US is reported as having the highest number of infections at over 2 million, followed by China with over 690,000 and Brazil with over 580,000.

Microsoft counts these statistics as proof that its anti-malware programme has been a success. Security Essentials is currently available and supported in 25 languages and 74 countries globally.

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(trk)

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