The beta of Microsoft's antivirus and anti-spam software made its debut yesterday. And it's already unavailable!
Microsoft’s free antivirus dubbed Security Essentials (code name Morro) has been out for just a day – and suddendly unavailable – the security world is already coming at it as if there is no tomorrow!
Speaking at a Churchill Club event yesterday on Cybersecurity, McAfee CEO Dave DeWalt couldn’t help making fun out of Microsoft’s latest security product while pointing to some of its flaws.
“Microsoft had a security product in the consumer and the enterprise space for many years, and the haven’t had a lot of uptake on that product, just a couple percent of market share and they were giving the product for free before anyway. And it’s a little bit of an oxymoron to say that Microsoft has a vulnerability and they’ll protect you,” jokes DeWalt. “It’s encouraging to see Microsoft educate the world in the need of security but at the same time it’s not a lot of a threat for a company like us.”
Some of Microsoft Security Essentials flaw according to McAfee’s CEO:
- Phishing is the most popular cyber-attack today, not viruses. So even if Security Essentials does a good job at protecting users from viruses, it won’t protect against all the other threats. “It’s a one dimensional product,” adds DeWalt;
- Can Microsoft really protect you when at the same there are so many vulnerabilities in their products;
- Security Essentials will only work on a “licensed” Windows machine. “It’s strange that they have built in this product version control. Sounds to me like an anti-piracy tool,” said DeWalt. McAfee’s CEO further notes that Security Essentials will first be available in emerging markets where piracy is rampant, as well as the U.S. and Israel.
- It’s not multi-platform. It won’t work on a Mac and probably never will!
In any case, Microsoft’s latest security offering is anything but a threat to the well establish security vendors like McAfee or Symantec. But what is troubling, is this could actually be a trojan software which ultimate goal is to fight piracy in emerging countries like China or Brazil.
Here’s a video excerpt of McAfee CEO Dave DeWalt on Microsoft’s Security Essentials threat to his business:
[...] Is Microsoft Free Antivirus An Anti-piracy Tool In Disguise … [...]
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McAfee is just running scared. After all they now can’t even put out an update now that does not crash computers. I stopped using it because it was a memory hog. I was infected several times using McAfee. So far MSE has caught every one.
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