eEye Digital Security

     Today I tried Microsoft's Security Essentials alongside Blink.  So far I have not encountered any problems at all.  Both security applications seem completely happy with eachother.  I did however, disable Windows Defender, this is no longer needed if you were to use Microsoft's Security Essentials.

http://www.microsoft.com/Security_essentials/

http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/

     My first impression of Security Essentials is it is very clean, light, simple, and straight to the point.  There are not a lot of confusing menus to go through and is easy to understand.  I give Microsoft a thumbs up for this product!

     So for those that are concerned with the detection rates of the Norman AV in Blink, this is a great addon.  I checked on the website av-comparitives:  http://www.av-comparatives.org/ and Microsofts "Live One Care" which to my knowledge the Security Essentials is based off of, received a 90% detection rate in August 2009's test results.  Norman's AV received a 84% detection rate.

     On another note, Computerworld had the following article on Security Essentials:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9138730/Independent_tester_Security_Essentials_very_good_

       Either way, this is a step up for those that worry about these things, but still want to be able to use Blink.

     I have attached some screenshots of Microsoft's Security Essentials for anyone interested in seeing what it looks like.

(Click on the Pictures to make them larger)

Microsoft Security Essentials's Home Tab

Microsoft Security Essentials's Update Tab

Microsoft Security Essentials's History Tab

Microsoft Security Essentials's Settings Tab #1

Microsoft Security Essentials's Security Tab #2

Microsoft Security Essentials's Security Tab #3

Microsoft Security Essentials's Security Tab #4

Microsoft Security Essentials's Security Tab #5

Microsoft Security Essentials's Security Tab #6

     Now this setting may bother some individuals (since Microsoft is seeing some of the alerts on a system), but I forsee it making Security Essentials very strong in the future as far as detection rates if a lot of users begin using this product OR if Microsoft builds it into Windows like they did with Windows Defender.

The Final Test:

     The final personal test that I conducted consisted of placing Blink Personal Edition and Microsoft Security Essentials (with default settings) on a shared computer at work that multiple people use randomly.  Now from the habits of some of these individuals, I know they have downloaded questionable content from sites dealing with "Grayware".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyware#Grayware

     I scanned the system with Blink and it did not find anything.  I scanned the system with the Security Essentials and it found one thing.  The main thing to point out here though, is that the Security Essentials is also detecting possibly "Unwanted Software" on your system.  Now, I know from many conversations with Norman (through eEye's support) Norman does not want to take a stance on Grayware, because it is concerned about removing programs, that may in fact be wanted by some users.  This is just something to keep in mind when you see that Norman did not detect anything and Security Essentials did.  To me this is just an added advantage that Microsoft's Security Essentials brings to your system when used alongside Blink.

An additional shot of the alert

Clicking on the "Show Details" button shows you the following information:

After you Clean the system, you see the following: