Microsoft Security Essentials is Microsoft’s leap into the Anti-Virus market. The suite aims at tackling viruses, trojans, worms, and malware. It is surprisingly light on resources (unlike a certain Windows-Defender) and has features to match its competitors.

This is the first week that Essentials has been out of beta, and the MS Malware Protection Center has released some interesting statistics.

Analyzing the data – drawing conclusions, forming predictions:

On the right is the Operating System distribution of MSE. Not surprisingly the Windows 7 group holds almost half of the total users. The same people who download a beta OS will be all the more likely to try out a beta product from the same vendor, coupled with the initial limited availability of Windows 7 compatible AVs and the inherent bugs that coincide with early releases/adoption, MSE appeals to users as it was created with Windows 7 in mind.

The Windows XP category, unlike Windows 7, is a melting pot of pros and noobs. On one side you have professionals who, due to staying informed, have bypassed upgrading to Vista and did yet make the move to Windows 7. The other side is the completely clueless users who had their computer set up by the ‘computer guy’ – these users are the largest source of infections and controlled botnets. It is this fraction of WinXP users who are responsible for the majority of total infections. The last group of Windows Vista are the outcasts, generally users who purchased a PC with Vista bundled, very few willfully upgraded from XP. Many of these users have the same technical knowledge as the noobs from XP, but they are protected from themselves through Vista’s utterly annoying, but apparently helpful, UAC restrictions. UAC, coupled with an updated Internet Explorer, will have a somewhat significant effect on protecting Vista users when compared to XP.

How it breaks down:

As I mentioned earlier, Windows XP would be responsible for the majority of infections. There was no requirement to look at the statistics to make that statement. Windows XP users with MSE who were not professionals are a very vulnerable group:

-Had their AV installed by someone else
-Do not care enough to install an AV
-Do not know to install an AV

These few factors raise red flags; as can be sufficiently gathered from world of politics and media, ignorance does not yield positive results.

The specific issue of ignorance is the main reason for the drastic difference of infection distribution per OS. How could an OS with 44% population dominance have only 16% of infections? How can 1/3rd of the sample population report over 50% of infections?

Future Problems:

The responsibility of protecting the computer is shifted from the user back to the computer. The threat? It’s not the virus, the trojan, not even the worm which infect an unpatched pc in 20 minutes – it is the user! The user unwittingly propagates the botnet, spreads viruses and trojans. This is not something easy to fix, there is no money in educating these users, but there is in exploiting them.