More Bad News for Microsoft Security

The good folks over at Virus Bulletin examined 15 anti-virus products designed for Windows Vista. The good news: 11 of those passed the company's stringent tests for virus security. To pass a product had to detect 100 percent of viruses in the wild and come up with no false positives along the way. (The full testing procedure is here.)

Now the bad news: Four companies failed the tests, including obscurities like GDATA and Norman, plus a couple of major ones: McAfee and, gulp, Microsoft. Here's the full list of everyone who was tested along with the results.

Microsoft in the security game? You might not have noticed. Windows Live OneCare is a new service that quietly launched in June 2006. After a 90-day trial, the service costs $50 a year (for up to three computers). Unfortunately, it also failed to catch some 37 of the virus samples in Virus Bulletin's testing (though, in fairness, that's a 99.91 percent correct detection rate). Still, I'd hope that not only would Microsoft be the best at detecting viruses on its own OS, that kind of protection would be free, as well.

While Virus Bulletin is careful to note that failure to pass its stringent tests should not be construed as being unworthy products (after all, the chance of getting one of those 37 specific viruses is extremely remote), I still can't help but think that, all things equal, I'd go with one of the products that did pass the test. Among the winners with familiar names: F-Secure, Grisoft, Kaspersky, and Symantec. If you're looking for Vista anti-virus, those might be good names to start your search with.