Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0

MSE 2.0 is not officially released but is available for download via Microsoft here

With MSE 2, Microsoft is evolving this product in a few meaningful ways. Setup is as simple as ever and retains the same basic UI of its predecessor, with the same Home, Update, History, and Settings tabs.



New features include:

Windows Firewall integration. MSE 2 integrates with the built-in Windows Firewall and will prompt you to enable this integration during Setup. This way, MSE can include firewall monitoring as part of its overall PC health monitoring.


New protection engine. The MSE antimalware engine has been updated to offer enhanced detection and cleanup capabilities with better performance.


Network inspection system. MSE 2 now helps protect against network-based exploits.


Other improvements. MSE 2 includes other important, if hard-to-find, changes. You can specify that CPU usage not exceed a certain limit (the default is 50 percent) during scheduled scans. MSE 2 reports when definitions were checked in addition to when they were updated so that you can be sure it's working properly if a long time has elapsed between definition updates. The real-time protection functionality offers more fine-grained control. You can now auto-remove quarantined files after a specified interval, though that option is disabled by default. And Microsoft now allows you to opt out of Microsoft SpyNet, the online community that ensures that MSE stays up to date; I don't recommend doing this for obvious reasons.

One feature, enhanced protection from web-based threats, was removed very late in the beta. According to Microsoft, this feature was removed for performance reasons.

download the new version.