![]() ![]() Unfortunately Microsoft has a difficult time giving short, clear and definite answers in situations like this. ![]() The complex world of anti-malware tools and Microsoft’s role in it However, simply choosing a different approach to making the product better is certainly not something you can interpret as “giving up”.Īnd those “efforts best spent elsewhere”? They benefit all the anti-malware vendors. You may disagree with the strategy, you may consider independent third party testing to be a valid and valuable approach for anti-malware tool comparison. It’s as if they had said “we’re walking away from the comparison testing game, because we believe our efforts are best spent elsewhere”. What this says to me is that Microsoft has shifted resources away from trying to look good in random tests, and applied those resources to being good in the real world. There’s something not right about that – we’re not doing the best job for our customers.” – Holly Stewart, quoted in PCPro If they are doing that work, they are not looking at those threats that are affecting our customers. “We used to have part of our team directed towards predicting test results and figuring out what might be in someone’s test. One of the most unfortunate interpretations the original article deals with Microsoft seemingly “giving up” by saying that they were shifting focus away from “predicting test results”. (I know, I’ve lived this with other products. When you’re a Microsoft person working in the Malware Protection Center, making that recommendation implies that when something goes wrong you’re the manufacturer, and you’ll have to answer grandma as to why your product didn’t protect her computer. It’s one thing when I recommend a product to my friends and family – if it breaks I can blame the manufacturer. That’s a statement of belief in the product. Recommending the technologies to your friends and families – especially when it’s the technology you’re responsible for – doesn’t sound like giving up to me. We believe in Microsoft antimalware products and strongly recommend them to our customers, to our friends, and to our families. In a subsequent blog post on the Microsoft Malware Protection Center blog, Our commitment to Microsoft antimalware, Dennis Batchelder, Partner Group Program Manager of the center concludes a general discussion about Microsoft’s commitment to the technology with this statement: ![]() The answer is clear: there’s no need for concern, MSE remains a fundamentally safe choice. She also directed me to others who were able to confirm my understanding of the entire situation.Īt the top of my list of concerns was simply whether people currently using MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials / Windows Defender 1) should be concerned – is Microsoft committed to making sure that consumers who choose to use MSE are safe and will remain so in the future? I managed to contact Holly Stewart, the person quoted in the original article, who pointed me at some recently posted official clarification. Should people using MSE today be concerned? I went to the source and contacted Microsoft directly for clarification. But even I know that just repeating and embellishing what others are saying about what others are saying isn’t the right way to approach something like this. Now, I don’t call myself a “journalist” – I’m just a geek with a voice on the web trying to help people use their computers. As the story was repeated, even more speculation was added and assumptions were made. Worse, the repetition included not only a couple of quotes without full context from a Microsoft spokesperson and also additional speculation by the author of that original piece. I’m also not changing what I use myself, which is MSE.Īs it turns out, the majority of the “journalism” on the topic over the past couple of weeks has simply been repeating a single source of information. Microsoft Security Essentials remains my recommendation for most people. To put it a different way, I’m not changing my recommendation. If you’ve been happy with it, you’re perfectly welcome to keep on using it as you have in the past. ![]()
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