AV-Test.Org; a fully independent Germany based cyber security company, has not certified Microsoft’s recent security updates. This is the second time for Microsoft where AV-Test.Org has decided to shake its head in disapproval.

AV-Test.Org Report Warns about Microsoft Security Essentials’ Instability:

The AV-Test.Org reports are more of a warning for online companies; it is up to them whether they want to upgrade their system software and public services to provide secure end user experience. As far as Microsoft Security Essentials was concerned, it wasn’t the only platform that was flagged by AV-Test.Org guys.

The German company reportedly conducts tests on latest software updates and security packages rolled out by other companies. The tests conducted during the month of December and November (2012) pointed out 3 failed certifications in ‘PC Tools Internet Security 2012’, ‘AhnLab Internet Security 8.0’ and finally Microsoft Security Essentials: Version 4.1.

For Microsoft, this was the second test run by AV-Test.Org experts. On the up side, Dave Forstrom, director of ‘Trustworthy Computing for Microsoft’ responded via an email, saying:

Microsoft believes in a defense in-depth strategy for antimalware protection that includes using Microsoft Security Essentials / Windows Defender in tandem with other appropriate security features such as SmartScreen, as well as keeping all software up-to-date.

Our antimalware engine is designed to work in concert with these Microsoft security features to create a comprehensive security strategy. Microsoft focuses its protection efforts on what affects our customers, using real-world data collected from more than 600 million systems worldwide. We weigh these samples by severity and prevalence of malware in the wild.

The Director of ‘Trustworthy Computing for Microsoft’ either failed to address the security test result SNAFU, or chose not to talk about it in the open. Meanwhile, the CEO of AV-Test.Org, Andreas Marx thinks that online security is becoming a subject of crucial importance these days.

“Every two seconds we see three new malware samples, which [add] up to a few million samples per month. Instead of looking at millions of samples, our focus is on the unique families.

Out of every family, we select recent samples in order to use them in our tests. So the impact of these samples is indeed low, however, the impact of the malware family is considerably high. We favor the family-based approach over the sample-based one because of today’s malware situation,” said Andreas Marx.

For Microsoft, the time is now to act fast in order to protect its integrity in the World Wide Web communities.

Editor Note:

AV-Test.Org CEO Andreas Marx’s response was quoted from CNET website. More details available at http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-3667_7-57564385/microsoft-bombs-another-security-test/ . 

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 19th, 2013 at 4:32 AM and is filed under Microsoft, National News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.