New Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0 Antimalware Engine Next Week

Microsoft is planning to kick up the antimalware engine powering a number of its security products up a notch in the week of June 20, 2011.

According to the Redmond company, an update to the antimalware engine of such products as Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0 is scheduled to drop at the start of next week.

However, the software giant wasn’t exactly on time with such releases in the past, and the possibility always exists that the refresh could slip for no more than a few days.

As users familiar with the antimalware engine updates from Microsoft already know, this is nothing but a standard refresh for the company.

“As part of regular update of our antimalware technology to address the latest in the threat landscape, MMPC is planning to release a new antimalware engine on 20 June 2011,” a member of the Microsoft Antimalware Engine team stated.

“Engine Version will be in the range of 1.1.700X.0,” the Redmond company revealed.

Customers running Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0 are among those who will start leveraging an updated antimalware engine next week. But they won’t be alone, in addition to MSE 2.0, Microsoft will also update security solutions such as: Forefront Client Security, Forefront Endpoint Protection, and Windows Intune Endpoint Protection.

According to statistics shared with the public by OPSWAT, Microsoft Security Essentials is the most used security solution worldwide.

MSE has a larger user base than any other free antivirus product, and is dwarfing paid AV in terms of market share.

OPSWAT estimates that over 10.6% of users are running Microsoft Security Essentials, with Avira Antivir Personal Free Antivirus runner up (10.18%) and Avast! Free Antivirus in third place (8.66%).

Microsoft has not commented on OPSWAT’s statistics, not has the company shared any usage data of their own related to MSE.

Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) 2.0 RTM is available for download here.

AVG Free Edition 10.0 is available for download here.

Avira AntiVir Personal - Free Antivirus 10.0 is available for download here.