UPDATED Microsoft updates OneCare ahead of rivals

 

Gallery

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 15 Feb 2007 at 15:52

Hogan added that despite Microsoft's advantages, it doesn't appear to have been successful against its competitors. 'That's not to say that this [early access to vulnerability details] benefits Microsoft across the board. While ownership of the OS and malware reporting tools that ship with OS updates and send back infection information and samples is advantage enough, it doesn't necessarily seem to have benefited them to the degree you'd expect based on our own internal and third-party evaluation of their security offerings.'

Even so, it's relatively early days for Microsoft's consumer security software. Built around expertise bought in from Romanian antivirus company GeCAD, OneCare only launched in the US in the middle of last year, hitting UK shores in January 2007.

It failed VirusBulletin's round up of antivirus software for Vista, and according to Symantec-commissioned research fared poorly in comparison with the competition when it came to detecting rootkits and spyware. However, OneCare was the only antispyware software to clean up 100 per cent of the spyware it found.