A new study has found Microsoft Defender is the best Windows 10 antivirus out there. Microsoft Defender was chosen among 22 end-user antivirus software between the period of July and August this year. To keep things fair, these products were evaluated on the basis of their default settings.
Microsoft Defender now ‘Best Windows 10 antivirus’
“We always used the most current publicly-available version of all products for the testing,” said AV-Test, an independent IT security institute further adding: “They were allowed to update themselves at any time and query their in-the-cloud services.”
Researchers focused on what they describe as “realistic test scenarios.” Furthermore, researchers put those antivirus software to test against real-world threats. Additionally, researchers had to demonstrate the capabilities of those antivirus software, courtesy of individual components, and protection layers.
Microsoft Defender recently combined Microsoft 365 security and Azure security, Microsoft also rebranded several security products. Last year, Microsoft rebranded Windows Defender as Microsoft Defender.
In protection against 0-day malware attacks including web and e-mail threats, the performance of Microsoft Defender was above the industry average. Similarly, it also passed the detection of widespread and prevalent malware discovered in over a period of 4 weeks.
Microsoft Defender also topped the list of the best Windows 10 antivirus in terms of overall protection against real-world threats, performance, and usability.
“AV-TEST creates identical and reproducible conditions for all the products within a test. For this purpose, the test routine for all products and for each test case is carried out simultaneously, and identically configured test systems are deployed,” researchers added.
In addition to Windows, Mac, and Linux, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) for Android is also available to download via Google Play Store. The app promises to help safeguard enterprise customers against various cybersecurity threats on Android.
A couple of months ago, Microsoft said that web content filtering will be accessible alongside Microsoft Defender antivirus, further eliminating the need for any additional partner licensing.
Web content filtering allows organizations to track and regulate access to websites based on their content categories.
