Microsoft's security solutions are newcomers to a multi-billion dollar market, which is saturated by products from household names, such as Symantec, McAfee, Sophos and Kaspersky. At the same time, the Redmond company itself is making its first timid steps into the security industry, which is largely charted territory by now, and Microsoft benefits from the collaboration of some heavyweights that have occupied key positions with the competition. While the initial steps with its consumer antivirus Windows Live OneCare have been shaky, to say the least, Microsoft can only go up, and it has constantly been improving its scores.

When it comes down to protecting users against zero-day threats, solutions from the company are only a half opened door, according to an analysis put together by Mark Harris - Director of SophosLabs. Harris looked at an extensive line-up of security products, from a variety of vendors, combining statistics of pro-active detection for a total of four months. The image included toward the bottom of this article will present you with the results of the proactive detection rates, for no less than 32 security solutions.

Microsoft products managed to detect a total of 10 alerts and have been credited with a proactive detection rate of new malware of 50%. The Redmond company is topped only by AntiVir, Ikarus, Kaspersky, Sophos and Webwasher. The top two products are from Sophos and Kaspersky with detection rates of 80% and 65% respectively. Microsoft security solutions are equaled by NOD32v2, F-Secure, DrWeb, and AVG, all with the same proactive detection percentage.

On the other hand, the Redmond company managed to top results from Avast, BitDefender, F-Prot, McAfee, Panda, Sunbelt and Symantec, all close to lamentable detection of zero-day threats. Proactive detection refers to technology that permits a security solution that will correctly detect and identify as a threat a completely unkown piece of malicious code (a zero-threat).