Advice Request Is Windows Defender just as good as any other free antivirus solution?

[Marac]

Is Windows Defender just as good as any other free antivirus solution?

 

[Sunshine-boy]

Yes.

 

[dJim]

same question but for firewall ?

 

[Electr0n]

same question but for firewall ?

Windows firewall is pretty great on it's own.

 

[John Burns]

I both are pretty good and they certainly work better with Windows 10 than some, particularly when updating Windows.

 

[JM Safe]

I would suggest WD (PUP protection enabled) + ZAM Free, EEK for a light but good combo. So, yes, WD is really improved recently.

 

[shmu26]

Windows Defender is as good or better than many paid solutions. But you can make it even better if you tweak it. Use ConfigureDefender by Andy Ful.

 

[Ink]

Putting level of protection and detection rates aside, it's better in some cases.
No upsell ads
No nagware
No bloatware
etc.

You'll just have to try each and see for yourself.

 

[roger_m]

It's a very good antivirus, but depending on how fast your system is, it may slow it down more than some of the alternatives.

 

[Deleted member 178]

if against prevalent malware, yes; if against 0-days, no.

 

[Andy Ful]

Defender on Windows 10 has local AI + AI in the cloud (with malware detonation in the sandbox), so it can catch as many 0-day malware as any other good free AV. This is especially true for EXE, DLL, and SCR malicious files. That can be seen when analyzing MRG Effitas tests Q1 2018, Q4 2017. The level of catching 0-day malware depends on Defender settings:

• Cloud Protection Level: Default, High, Highest, Block (not available on Windows Home versions).
• Cloud Check Time Limit (10-60 seconds, 10 sec. by default).
• ASR rules (not activated by default).
• Network Protection (not activated by default).

As in the case of other AVs, some 0-day malware can still fool the local AI (and sometimes detonation procedure, too). Also, the 0-day script & scriptlet malware (highly obfuscated) can be still dangerous.

The top paid AVs have some additional features like monitoring the network traffic, Anti-Exploit modules, etc., which can be useful for detecting 0-day malware (especially in Enterprises). Yet, such AVs should be rather compared to Windows Defender with ATP (paid subscription).
.
The performance of Windows Defender is below the average when:

• copying many files
• opening folders with many executables
• installing/uninstalling applications with many executables
• managing the quarantine
• performing the full scan

For the daily tasks like web browsing, launching applications, reading/writing documents, performing the quick scan, Defender behaves similarly to other AVs.