Features
Microsoft Security Essentials is an antivirus software (AV) product that fights malware (malicious software), including computer viruses, spyware, Trojan horses and rootkits. The software runs on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. It replaces Windows Live OneCare, a discontinued commercial subscription-based AV service, and the free Windows Defender, which until Windows 8 only protected users from adware and spyware. It automatically checks for and downloads the virus definitions it relies on from Microsoft Update, a web-based software service updated three times a day. Users may alternatively download the updates manually from the Microsoft Security Portal website. On 30 September 2011, a faulty definition update caused the product to incorrectly tag Google Chrome as malware. The issue was resolved within three hours.
MSE is built upon the same foundation as other Microsoft security products; all use the same virus definitions and anti-malware engine, known as Microsoft Malware Protection Engine (MSMPENG). It lacks the personal firewall of OneCare or the centralized management features of Forefront Endpoint Protection.
MSE provides real-time protection, constantly monitoring activities on the computer and scanning new files as they are downloaded or created. It disables detected threats and prompts for user input on how to deal with them. If no response is received within ten minutes, suspected threats are handled according to the default actions defined in the application's settings. Depending on those settings, it may also create System Restore checkpoints before removing the detected malware. As a part of real-time protection, by default, MSE reports all suspicious behaviors of monitored programs to Microsoft Active Protection Service (MAPS, originally Microsoft SpyNet), a web-based service. If the report matches a newly discovered malware threat with an unreleased virus definition, the new definition is downloaded to remove the threat.
Hardware requirements for the product depend on the operating system. On a computer with Windows XP, it requires at least a 500 MHz processor and 256 MB of RAM. On a system running Windows Vista or Windows 7, it requires a 1 GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM. It also needs a computer monitor with a display resolution of at least 800 × 600 pixels, 200 MB of free hard disk space and an Internet connection.
Read more about this topic: Microsoft Security Essentials
Famous quotes containing the word features:
“However much we may differ in the choice of the measures which should guide the administration of the government, there can be but little doubt in the minds of those who are really friendly to the republican features of our system that one of its most important securities consists in the separation of the legislative and executive powers at the same time that each is acknowledged to be supreme, in the will of the people constitutionally expressed.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
““It looks as if
Some pallid thing had squashed its features flat
And its eyes shut with overeagerness
To see what people found so interesting
In one another, and had gone to sleep
Of its own stupid lack of understanding,
Or broken its white neck of mushroom stuff
Short off, and died against the windowpane.””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)