Free Technology Zone

Microsoft Security Essentials, also known as “Morro”, was officially released as BETA to the public Tuesday, 23 Jun 2009.  This article gives you a quick first look at it.  If you want to look at it yourself, you can download it at https://connect.microsoft.com/securityessentials, but you’ll need an account in connect.microsoft.com (just make one if you don’t have one; it’s free).

OK.  Here’s a quick look at MSE’s user interface.

When you’ve installed it, you will see this icon on your traybar:  

When you open it, you will the following four tabs:  Home, Update, History, and Settings.

After you install it, MSE will perform its initial scan.  When it did the scan, I checked to see how it was doing with respect to resources and how it was affecting the performance of my computer.  And to my surprise, it was very forgiving.  I was able to do work without having to wait or be affected by MSE scan because apparently it generally tries to run when your computer is idle.  So, when you are busy doing other things, it does release the CPU resource as needed.  Check the task manager below and you’ll see that when I was idle the CPU was at 100%, then I started working and the CPU utilization went down.

Also check out the detailed performance below.  If you aren’t idle, it does get out of your way.

Its memory utilization, for an AV product, doesn’t look that bad.

Of course, I can’t really tell at this point how effective it is in catching malware.  I’ll save that for someone else to do.  For now, know that it is out there and seems to be running just fine.

Protect your computer/confidential information

Introduction

These days, there are so many bad or nasty things your computer can catch or stumble into from the Internet without even trying.  Virus, malware, trojan, spyware, and malicious web sites are some of the things to avoid. Each is intended to damage files, steal your identity, capture your account information, show you ads, or turn your computer into a platform for launching more infections (worms, virus, adware/spyware).

With so many potential vectors of attack, what is one to do? How is a typical computer user going to fight this onslaught? Well, if you are reading this, chances are you are looking to improve your computer’s security because of some prior bad experience. Guess what, you’ve found the most complete discussion on computer protection ever.

First Line of Defense

In order to protect your computer, you need to acquire a multi-layer set of solutions like the one listed below.  All these are free!

• Avast! Home Edition (anti-virus and anti-spyware)
• K9 Web Protection (web filter, protection from inappropriate and bad web sites)
• AVG LinkScanner (anti-phishing, web protection)
• Ad Aware Free (adware and malware protection)
• Spybot Search and Destroy (spyware protection)

Last Line of Defense

If your first line of defense fails, your last line of defense can help you by protecting your personal or confidential information.

Encryption

If you own a laptop, then you shouldn’t leave home without making sure you are using TrueCrypt–an encryption solution that can help make sure your confidential and personal information are totally secure should you lose your laptop, or god forbid, should it be stolen.  This free open-source software solution allows you to create virtual encrypted disk drives which only you can read.

ID Protection

If you are worried about identity theft and have a few dollars to spare, look into subscribing to a credit or identity protection service like protectmyid.com.  This service sends you alerts whenever there is a change in your credit status–like someone applying for credit under your name!

Your Anti-Virus (AV) software starting to bog down your computer?  I’ve seen and have experienced this personally.  What did I do?  I uninstalled my AV software and installed something more lightweight like avast! Home Edition. 

Give it a try, I’ve been using it, and I have been very happy with its performance.