Microsoft's Security Essentials scores 'very good' with independent tester

From InfoWorld: Microsoft's free Security Essentials antivirus software identified 98 percent of over half a million malware samples, an accuracy rating an independent testing company called "very good" today.

Germany-based AV-Test.org tested Security Essentials, the free software Microsoft shipped Tuesday, on Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), Vista SP2 and the final code of Windows 7, against two different collections of malware, said Andreas Marx, one of the firm's two managers.

The first test put Security Essentials in the ring against more than 3,700 viruses, Trojans and worms culled from the most recent WildList, a collection of threats actively attacking computers. "All samples were successfully detected and blocked during our on-demand and on-access tests," Marx said in an e-mail today.

The second test sicced Security Essentials on a much larger set of malware. Of the 545,3444 malware samples in that collection, Microsoft's software nailed 536,535, resulting in what Marx characterized as a "very good detection score" of 98.4 percent.

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