The Windows OneCare team has announced the public availability of the beta of Windows OneCare Live, a comprehensive PC health service for consumers, which offers an integrated approach to help consumers protect and care for their computers.
Windows OneCare Live includes antivirus software, developed through technologies acquired when it bought Romanian security firm GeCAD. As with other av products it uses both signature and heuristic or behavioural approaches for identifying and swatting nasty code.
It also includes the OneCare firewall, offering bi-directional monitoring and blocking, keeping tabs both on attempts to get into the system as well as unusual attempts to access the Internet by files already installed
The Beta was restricted to US residents only, until recently. Now anyone can enter the program - it is free, but for a limited time. Microsoft plans to make this a fee-based service in the future.
The service is part of the company's Windows Live strategy announced last month, which sees Microsoft compete more directly with the likes of Google and Yahoo by using the web to deliver new products and services to customers.
Also being introduced is an online, on-demand virus scanner as part of Windows Live Safety Center beta.
The Microsoft Security team has also announced an update to the current Windows AntiSpyware beta to extend the expiration date to 31 July 2006. The update should be automatic to anyone running the software.
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