14 DAY TRIAL // With version 2.0 of Microsoft Security Essentials in the oven (available in Beta), Microsoft recently celebrated the one year anniversary of version 1.0 of its free security solution for Windows. One year after the advent of MSE, the software giant is making a series of moves designed to bring the antivirus to more and more people worldwide, on top of the 30 million that are already running Microsoft Security Essentials.
As of October 2010, some business customers will also be able to take advantage of Microsoft Security Essentials, free of charge of course.
The Redmond company announced in the second half of September 2010 that small businesses can also leverage MSE on up to 10 computers in their organization without paying a single cent on licenses.
“Microsoft is making its Microsoft Security Essentials available to small businesses on up to 10 PCs for FREE, beginning in early October,” noted Eric Ligman, Global Partner Experience Lead Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group.
“By providing Microsoft Security Essentials to small businesses free of charge, Microsoft extends its commitment to help these companies save money and grow their business by offering no-cost protection from viruses, spyware and other malicious threats.”
Microsoft Security Essentials is already available to customers in 74 markets (25 languages) around the world, and most probable, small businesses in these countries will also get the free security solution by the end of this month.
At the same time, Microsoft has inked a deal with HP in order to have Microsoft Security Essentials pre-installed on HP Envy Notebooks.
The agreement between the two companies covers devices shipped as part of the HP ENVY 14 series and the HP ENVY 14 Beats edition series PCs, and it is already into effect as of the end of September.
Of course, customers can now also test Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0 which is currently in Beta, and available via Microsoft Connect.
Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0 brings to the table a variety of improvements over MSE version 1.0, designed to offer better protection for users.
“According to the Microsoft Malware Protection Center (MMPC), in addition to providing a no-cost security solution to tens of millions of customers that may not have been actively protected before, Microsoft Security Essentials detected nearly 400 million threats over the past year, with customers choosing to remove more than 366 million of those threats,” revealed Microsoft’s Eric Foster.
Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0 is available for download here.