Microsoft Security Essentials Fails AV-Test Certification

Every two months, the German independent information security institute AV-Test tests popular anti-virus software. In its latest test , which it ran on Windows 7 in September and October, Microsoft Security Essentials did not score enough points to get certified.

Although this in itself is not so impressive, Microsoft software was the only one that did not receive a certificate from AV-Test. In comparison, three other free antivirus products - Avast, AVG and Panda Cloud - received it.

There are three categories where antiviruses earn points: protection, recovery, and usability. When points are added up, the software must score at least 11 points out of 18 in order to receive a certificate. Security Essentials earned only 10.5 points, which begs the question: what caused this deterioration?

The reason was that Security Essentials was unable to recognize a sufficient number of zero-day malware. Its rate was 69% in September and 64% in October. While the average among all tested antiviruses was 89%! The remaining scores remained unchanged compared to previous tests. In fairness, we note that the majority of the tested software had lower results than in May and June.

The winner in terms of the number of points was Bitdefender Internet Security, which scored 17 out of 18 points. Complexes from F-Secure and Kaspersky took second and third places, respectively, with 15.5 and 15.0 points. Of the free software, ZoneAlarm Free Antivirus + Firewall scored the highest 14.5 points.

Note that in a similar test for corporate security products, Microsoft Forefront Endpoint scored only 9.5 points.