AV-Comparatives Malware Protection Test - Sep 2021

Nope, just stating facts. Either you paid for Windows when you bought your machine, or you bought a retail version of Windows. Either way, Microsoft Defender comes included, just as File Explorer does.

 

Well, I think it goes for all AV's who have a low offline detection rate. It does indeed makes sense that it's perhaps simply a case of a smaller offline signature database, but wasn't heuristics, AI and behavioral monitoring supposed to help with spotting malware? Seems like this stuff has hardly been improved in the last 15 years or so.

If an AV needs the cloud in order to get a high detection rate, it's not that advanced in my view. So I'm quite disappointed with Win Defender, from a technical point of view.

Also, we should not forget that most of these AV's couldn't get a 100% detection rate, so it's always a good idea to use a second line of defense, people who say you don't need these extra tools, simply don't get it.

 

Everyone pays for Windows for that matter, if one buys a license for another AV nowadays that is extra money for the the very rich AV companies. You would still have to pay for Windows even if Defender wasn't there...

 

It does help a lot and behavioural detection has improved massively over the years. The problem with heuristics, is that you can increase its sensitivity and detect more malware, but doing so also causes more false positives. It's not possible for behavioural detection to detect every possible malicious action. Once again, there has to be a balance between detecting malicious actions and false positives, or you will get a lot of alerts when installing non-malicious software, which can get very annoying. If you look at AI, it typically causes lots of false positives. You can see this when scanning files at VirusTotal. But WiseVector is an exception.

 

I've been saying the same for years. But still everyone wants that magic product that detects everything bad and nothing good. It doesn't hurt to try but it will never happen because it can't be done.

 

I take it that WD won't turn on if you have another A/V running.

 

No, not unless you remove the other A/V.

 

Depends if the other “AV” is registered or not.

Like for example you can choose to use Malwarebytes Premium as “the other AV” and register it in the security center which will make Windows disable WD

 

You can turn on MD Periodic Scanning if you have another AV installed and registered in Windows, but that doesn't provide any real-time protection.

 

I have the WD Chrome Extension so it is still helping me. https://windows101tricks.com/windows-defender-browser-protection-extension-chrome/

 

Glad to see MS cleaning up its act with regards to fp's. Offline was not so good, but the same can be said for some other third parties.

 

Yes, but that's why I said that it seems it has hardly been improved in the last 15 years. Seems like most AV's will still need to rely on the cloud for behavioral monitoring. I had hoped that AI and ML would make things more advanced. I believe Cylance (owned by BlackBerry) claimed they could spot most malware without the need for the cloud, but so far they have always performed quite badly in AV tests.

I have to say that so far WD has almost never given me FP's, except for some keylogging simulators. I have been using WD for almost a year.

 

You can't go wrong and its what I use too...