Why your anti-virus software might have stopped working this week without telling you!

Why clients ask "what's the best FREE anti-virus for my small business" my answer is always the same, Microsoft's Security Essentials is a free no-nonsense, no-hassle anti-virus and anti-spyware tool that does 80% of what small businesses need. Microsoft's own tagline for the application is "Proven anti-virus protection for free? That's what I need!" And it's true... or at least it was, until this week.

Microsoft released a new version of the Microsoft Anti-virus application a few weeks ago, and prompted everyone to "Upgrade" it's still free, but the upgrade takes about 20 minutes per PC and requires you to reboot when it's finished, so many people ignore it's prompting seen below.

Again the problem being most people didn't take the  time to hit the "Upgrade Now" button the old version for some unexplained reason "stopped working" it never reported an error, or gave any signs of failure, but I've now seen 3 Pc's in the last week with virus infections that I KNOW were protected, but didn't get upgraded. So did Microsoft miss a virus definition distribution? Did the program hiccup and let a virus through? We're not sure, but we do know that if you DIDN'T Upgrade, you're likely unprotected, and possibly already infected without knowing it.

So if you're using Microsoft Security essentials, as I recommend most small business do (ask my why I tell 20% of my customers about a BETTER solution!) and you haven't already done the "upgrade" Microsoft recommended last week, you'd better soon, or, give us a call and we can arrange to have a technician install it for you and do a thorough security check at the same time.

Below is a screen shot of the older version not yet upgraded.

And the upgraded version below already installed (note the gray lines instead of the solid blue background).