Using numbers crunched from PC's running the company's OPSWAT's AppRemover tool (140,000 installations), MSE systems had realtime protection enabled in 94.6 percent of cases, slightly ahead of Avast, McAfee and Avira.

By contrast, Kaspersky Lab's Internet Security users only activated this important setting 65.5 percent of the time, with Norton Internet Security and Norton AntiVirus users not much better.

OPSWAT shows 'virtual desktop' security system | Free antivirus grabs more market share, claims Opswat survey

MSE users were also the best at updating frequency, with 94 percent updating in the previous week. Just under 65 percent of For Norton AntiVirus and McAfee VirusScan users had updated in the previous 60 days, something that would render the protection offered by the software moot.

When it came to systems scans, MSE again led the field with 74.5 percent of users having run one in the previous seven days while only a quarter of McAfee VirusScan users had done the same.