Microsoft is offering a new antivirus solution

Are you a home user paying $50 a year for anti virus?  Are you a network admin struggling to make a bogged down network better? Maybe your antivirus is the problem.  It could be slowing your computer and network down.  Microsoft has just released two products to help home and business users with these problems.  These products are Microsoft Security Essentials and Microsoft Forefront.

First, I’m going to discuss Microsoft Security Essentials or MSE as I will refer to it.  MSE is a light weight antivirus suite that protects your computer from viruses just like paid-for antivirus programs such as Symantec Antivirus.  In various test MSE has performed exceptionally.  According to a review done by Nick Mediati, PC World, 06/25/2009

"When put against AV-Test's "WildList" collection of 3,194 recent, common viruses, bots, and worms, Microsoft Security Essentials detected and removed each and every one of the malware samples. How does this compare to other security products? AV-Test coordinator Andreas Marx notes that "several other [antivirus] scanners are still not able to detect and kill all of these critters yet." In addition, Microsoft Security Essentials put up a perfect score with zero false positives--it didn't flag a single clean file as being malicious. AV-Test also took an initial look at Microsoft Security Essentials' root kit detection, testing it against a few root kit samples, and found "nothing to complain about."

Another great thing about MSE is that it does not take a lot of system resources.   It also offers active scanning.  This means that while you are surfing the internet it will scan for malware. The best thing about MSE for home users is that its 100% free.  Which means you can save 50$ a year and have a top rated anti-virus suite.

The second product Microsoft released is geared for businesses small and large.  Microsoft Forefront is a business class security suite.  It was built with some of the same fundamentals of MSE such as being crafted to reduce the stress put on business computers and their networks.  The other advantage of Forefront is that it integrates into a windows environment easily.  It will protect your various servers and services such as Exchange Server, Microsoft SharePoint, and Office Communication Services.  

Both of these products show promise for changing the way users think of antivirus.  They are giving users excellent protection while not bogging down their computers.  This is why MSE is one of the best free anti virus suites available.  At the same time Microsoft Forefront is establishing itself as a robust business class security suite.