Nearly two years after acquiring antivirus technology and personnel from Romanian company GeCAD, Microsoft has announced plans to enter the antivirus business through a PC management subscription service called Windows OneCare.

Full Security Suite

Available for public beta testing by the end of 2005, OneCare will consist of client software and associated services that must be paid for on a subscription basis. It will offer the following features:

Antivirus. Using technology derived from GeCAD, OneCare will offer active protection (e.g., scans of incoming e-mail attachments) and regularly scheduled scans of the entire PC. The OneCare client will automatically download updated antivirus signatures, which will be maintained and provided by Microsoft.

Firewall. OneCare will install a managed two-way (both inbound and outbound) firewall with ongoing policy updates—for instance, if a new attack targets a specific port, the remote service will automatically close that firewall port. The current Windows Firewall blocks only unwanted inbound traffic.

Antispyware integration. OneCare will be integrated with Microsoft Antispyware, the antispyware program that Microsoft gained in its Dec. 2004 acquisition of Giant Software. Microsoft will continue to offer Antispyware as a free stand-alone application.

Update integration. Although this feature is not available in the current closed beta, OneCare will eventually be integrated with Microsoft Update, the company's free service for downloading security updates and patches to Windows and other products. Microsoft will continue to offer Update on a stand-alone basis.

Maintenance. OneCare will automatically schedule and perform regular maintenance tasks such as defragmentation and disk clean-up.

Backup and restore. OneCare will offer a simpler manual backup and restore feature than Windows—for instance, the product will make educated guesses about which files to back up, and users will choose files by type, such as documents or media files, rather than by their location in a file tree. Microsoft has not announced any plans to support backup and restore via a hosted service, but this is a likely long-term direction.

Help. The OneCare client will include links to PC help resources, such as online self-help, text chat, and phone help. It's not clear whether these will be new services or simply pointers to existing services that Microsoft already offers.

To make maintenance easy for novices, OneCare will be designed to require as little user intervention as possible. Many of the functions, such as disk fragmentation and antivirus scanning, will be automated and occur automatically on a preset schedule, and OneCare will regularly download new policies to the user's machine, such as information about new types of spyware. OneCare will also report information back to Microsoft, such as new file extensions that should be added to the backup routine. (This information will be aggregated on an anonymous basis, rather than associated with particular users.)

If customers stop subscribing, the service will continue to provide limited functionality. For example, the antivirus program will continue to scan for viruses, but no new virus signatures will be added to the scan, and users will still be able to restore files with OneCare's backup-and-restore feature even if subscriptions are no longer valid (as long as they don't uninstall the OneCare client).

OneCare is an outgrowth of a PC Satisfaction trial (code-named A1) that Microsoft conducted beginning in summer 2003. It is now being tested in a closed beta by Microsoft employees and will move to a public beta by the end of 2005. Microsoft has not yet revealed the final release date, pricing, or distribution details, but based on past Microsoft scheduling, a reasonable release date is mid-2006. The company will probably distribute the client as a download through Microsoft.com or MSN, and distribution deals with OEMs and shrink-wrapped retail SKUs are also possible. The company will offer new customers a free trial for a limited period, after which customers must subscribe.

Depending on pricing, OneCare could have a significant impact on security software companies, such as Computer Associates, McAfee, and Symantec, which charge about US$70 for similar product suites, with annual renewal fees of US$25 or more. It also may impact other utility vendors such as Executive Software, which makes disk defragmentation software, and EMC Dantz, which makes stand-alone backup software for Windows XP. To remain competitive in the consumer market, these companies will have to differentiate themselves with better signature files, new features, lower pricing, or improved ease-of-use.

Although OneCare will be targeted at consumers, Microsoft has also expressed plans to build an enterprise security product or service based on technology gained in its Feb. 2005 acquisition of Sybari Software and have promised a for-fee enterprise version of its antispyware product, spelling further competition for security and utility companies.

Resources

Microsoft's security-related acquisitions are covered in "Antivirus Expertise Acquired" on page 13 of the Aug. 2003 Update, "Software Giant Acquires Giant Software" on page 30 of the Jan. 2005 Update, and "Microsoft Acquires Sybari Software" on page 19 of the Mar. 2005 Update.