Windows Live OneCare No Longer the Laughingstock of the Security Industry

Mehacomp_91

- Beats Symantec in terms of proactive detection

WindowsLive OneCare, Microsoft's one-size-fits-all solution is no longer thelaughingstock of the security industry. Back in the first quarter of2007, following the release of Windows Live OneCare 1.5 whichaccompanied Windows Vista to the market, Microsoft's antivirus managedto drastically underperform in a test put together by AV-Comparatives.At that time, OneCare came dead last in all the tests run by AV-Comparatives, receiving no certification from the Austrian antivirus lab.

But, Microsoft has been hammering away at OneCare taking it to version 1.6 and then to 2.0, and                        constantly improving the antivirus. In mid 2007, OneCare scored a lothigher in another AV-Comparatives test, and this trend is accentuating.Case in point: the latest test made available by AV-Comparatives at theend of November 2007. The antivirus lab has thrown together in the samearena no less than 17 security solutions, in a test involving falsepositives and both the proactive and retrospective on-demand detectioncapabilities of the products.

"Many new viruses and other types of malware appear every day, this iswhy it's important that antivirus products not only provide newupdates, as of then as fast as possible, in order to identify those newthreats, but also that they are able to detect such threats in advancewith generic and/or heuristic techniques. (...) Even if nowadays mostantivirus products provide daily or hourly updates, withoutheuristic/generic methiods there is always a time-frame where the useris not protected, and much more important than time to release anupdate, is the time it takes to get that update deployed", revealedAndreas Clementy, the head of the AV-Comparatives lab.

The following solutions were tested: avast! Professional Edition 4.7;AVG Anti-Malware 7.5; AVIRA AntiVir Personal Edition Premium 7.04;BitDefender Professional Plus 10; Dr.Web for Windows 4.44.1; eScanAnti-Virus 9.0; ESET NOD32 Anti-Virus 2.70.39; Fortinet FortiClient3.0; F-Prot for Windows 6.0.7.1; F-Secure Anti-Virus 7.01; G DATAAntiVirusKit (AVK) 17.0; Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7.0.0; McAfee VirusScan11.2; Microsoft OneCare 1.6; Norman Virus Control 5.91; Symantec NortonAnti-Virus 14.0 and TrustPort Antivirus Workstation 1.4.2. The goodnews for Microsoft is that OneCare is not only not finishing up in lastplace any more, but that the product is actually outperforming rivalsolutions from heavyweights of the security market.

Windows Live OneCare 1.6.2111.30 detected no less than 8.807 malwaresamples out of a total of 25.036 malicious items, and received a scoreof 35% and the Advanced Certification from AV-Test. OneCareoutperformed Symantec's Norton Anti-Virus 14.0.3.3 with just 8.733detections, NormanVirusControl (8.234), McAfee VirusScan (8.488),F-Secure Anti-Virus (3.473), F-Prot Anti-Virus (8.346) and AVGAnti-Malware (6.249). But at the same time, OneCare was virtually leftin the dust by Kaspersky AV 7.0.0.125 (10.125