- Microsoft Windows Defender Antivirus
- Use Windows Defender With Antivirus Windows 10
- Use Windows Defender With Another Antivirus
- Sep 03, 2018 Windows Defender Antivirus includes: Cloud-delivered protection for near-instant detection and blocking of new and emerging threats. Along with machine learning and the Intelligent Security Graph, cloud-delivered protection is part of the next-gen technologies that power Windows Defender Antivirus.
- To disable Windows Defender Antivirus permanently modifying the Registry, use these steps: Open Start. Search for regedit and click the top result to open the Registry Editor.
Windows 10 has built-in real-time antivirus named Windows Defender, and it’s actually pretty good. It automatically runs in the background, ensuring all Windows users are protected against viruses and other nasties. Here’s how it works.
Jul 07, 2017 Windows 10 has built-in real-time antivirus named Windows Defender, and it’s actually pretty good. It automatically runs in the background, ensuring all Windows users are protected against viruses and other nasties. Here’s how it works.
RELATED:What’s the Best Antivirus for Windows 10? (Is Windows Defender Good Enough?)
Starting with the Creators Update for Windows 10, Windows Defender’s interface changed a bit, and it was integrated into the new Windows Defender Security Center—which also provides access to security-related tools like family protection, firewall settings, device performance and health reports, and browser security controls. If you haven’t yet updated to the Creators Update, you should still be able to follow along pretty well.
Microsoft Windows Defender Antivirus
What Is Windows Defender?
Microsoft offered a standalone antivirus app named Microsoft Security Essentials in the days of Windows XP, Vista, and 7. With Windows 8, the product was tidied up a bit, bundled with Windows, and renamed Windows Defender. And it’s pretty good, if something of a mixed bag. It’s true that other antivirus apps—like BitDefender and Kaspersky—protect against more viruses in benchmarks.
But Windows Defender boasts some advantages, too. It’s by far the most non-invasive app, handling things in the background whenever it can and not nagging you all the time. Windows Defender also plays nicer with web browsers and other apps—respecting their security and privacy settings more than most other antivirus apps.
RELATED:How to Run Malwarebytes Alongside Another Antivirus
What you use is up to you, but Windows Defender is not a bad choice (and has overcome most of its problems from a few years back). We do, however, recommend running an anti-malware app like Malwarebytes in addition to whatever antivirus app you choose.
Take Advantage of Automatic Scans and Updates
Like other antivirus apps, Windows Defender automatically runs in the background, scanning files when they’re downloaded, transferred from external drives, and before you open them.
RELATED:Why Does Antivirus Software Quarantine Viruses Instead of Deleting Them?
You don’t really have to think about Windows Defender at all. It will only pop up to inform you when it finds malware. It won’t even ask you what you want to do with the malicious software it finds—it just cleans things up and quarantines the files automatically.
You’ll occasionally see a notification popup to let you know when a scan has been performed, and you can usually see the details of the last scan by opening the Action Center in Windows 10.
If Windows Defender does find a threat, you’ll also see a notification letting you know that it’s taking action to clean those threats—and no action is required from you.
RELATED:You Won’t Be Able to Disable (or Delay) Windows Updates on Windows 10 Home
Antivirus definition updates automatically arrive through Windows Update and are installed like any other system update. These types of updates don’t require rebooting your computer. That way, don’t need to worry about updating Windows Defender, because it’s all handled quietly and automatically in the background.
View Your Scan History and Quarantined Malware
You can view Windows Defender’s scan history anytime you want, and if you’re notified that it has blocked malware, you can view that information too. To fire up the Windows Defender Security Center, just hit Start, type “defender,” and then select “Windows Defender Security Center.”
In the Windows Defender Security Center window, switch to the “Windows Defender” tab (the shield icon) and then click the “Scan history” link.
The “Scan history” screen shows you all current threats, plus information about your last scan. If you want to see the full history of quarantined threats, just click the “See full history” link in that section.
Here, you can see all the threats that Windows Defender has quarantined. To see more about a threat, click the arrow to its right. And to see even more, click the “See details” link that shows up when you expand a particular threat.
RELATED:How To Tell If a Virus Is Actually a False Positive
You don’t really need to do anything else here, but if you didn’t have Windows Defender delete the threat when it was found, you’ll be given the option to do that on this screen. You’ll also be able to restore the item from quarantine, but you should only do this if you’re absolutely sure the detected malware is a false positive. If you’re not absolutely, 100 percent sure, don’t allow it to run.
Perform a Manual Scan
RELATED:Why You Don’t Need to Run Manual Antivirus Scans (And When You Do)
Back on the main “Windows Defender” tab, you can also have Windows Defender run a quick manual scan by clicking the “Quick Scan” button. Typically, you won’t need to bother with this since Windows Defender offers real-time protection and also performs regular automatic scans. However, if you just want to be safe—maybe you just updated your virus definitions—there’s absolutely no harm in running a quick scan.
You can also click the “Advanced scan” link on that screen to run three different types of scans:
- Full scan: The quick scan only scans your memory and common locations. A full scan checks every file and running program. It can easily take an hour or more, so it’s best to do this when you don’t plan on using your PC much.
- Custom scan: A custom scan lets you choose a particular folder to scan. You can also do this by right-clicking any folder on your PC and choose “Scan with Windows Defender” from the context menu.
- Windows Defender Offline scan: Some malware is tough to remove while Windows is running. When you select an offline scan, Windows restarts and runs a scan before Windows loads on the PC.
Configure Virus and Threat Protection Settings
By default, Windows Defender automatically enables real-time protection, cloud-based protection, and sample submission. Real-time protection ensures Windows Defender automatically finds malware by scanning your system in real time. You could disable this for a short period if necessary for performance reasons, but Windows Defender will automatically re-enable real-time protection to keep you safe later. Cloud-based protection and sample submission allow Windows Defender to share information about threats and the actual malware files it detects with Microsoft.
To enabled or disable any of these settings, click the “Virus & threat protection settings” link on the main “Windows Defender” tab.
And then toggle the settings on the screen that appears.
![Windows defender antivirus program Windows defender antivirus program](https://cdn.neow.in/news/images/uploaded/2018/08/1534714455_windowsdefender_story.jpg)
Set Up Exclusions for Certain Folders or Files
If you scroll down the very bottom of that same “Virus & threat protection settings” page, you can also set exclusions—files, folders, file types, or processes that you don’t want Windows Defender to scan. Just click the “Add or remove exclusions” link.
If antivirus is dramatically slowing down a certain app you know is safe by scanning it, creating an exclusion can speed things up again. If you use virtual machines, you might want to exclude those large files from the scanning process. If you have a huge photo or video library that you know is safe, you don’t really want scanning slowing down your editing.
To add an exclusion, click the “Add an exclusion” button, select the type of exclusion you want to add from the dropdown menu, and then point Windows Defender to whatever you want to exclude.
RELATED:Antivirus Slowing Your PC Down? Maybe You Should Use Exclusions
Just be careful to use exclusions sparingly and smartly. Each exclusion you add reduces your PC’s security by a bit, because they tell Windows Defender not to look in certain places.
What if You Install Another Antivirus?
Windows 10 automatically disables Windows Defender if you install another antivirus app. While another antivirus app is installed, Windows Defender won’t continue performing real-time scans, so it won’t interfere with your other app. You can still use Windows Defender to perform a manual—or offline—scan as a backup to your preferred antivirus app, though.
If you ever uninstall the other antivirus, Windows Defender will automatically kick into gear once again and take over, providing antivirus protection.
Do note, however, that certain anti-malware apps—like Malwarebytes—can be installed alongside Windows Defender and both will offer complimentary real-time protection.
Whichever antivirus product you prefer, it’s good that every single new Windows installation going forward will come with at least a baseline built-in antivirus protection. While it may not be perfect, Windows Defender does do a decent job, is minimally intrusive, and—when combined with other safe computing and browsing practices—might just be enough.
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When it comes to antivirus software, Windows Defender is the natural choice. In fact, it’s not so much a choice as just the standard state of things, as it comes pre-packed with Windows 10. (In previous Windows iterations it was known as Microsoft Security Essentials.) It’s, therefore, tempting to just leave it as is and say to yourself that things will probably be fine, right?
But is Windows’ built-in tool enough, or do we still need to rely on the big guns of antivirus software to keep us safe online? Read on for the lowdown.
Note: this analysis is based on tests carried out in December 2018. Results will inevitably vary over time, but we’ll be doing our best to keep on top of them.
How Does Windows Defender Compare?
Talking about Windows Defender in isolation won’t get us anywhere. What we need to know is how it stacks up to the biggest antivirus programs that you’ve probably downloaded or even paid for over the years – the McAfees, AVGs and Bitdefenders of the world.
Thankfully, there are several sites dedicated to comparing antivirus software on a monthly basis.
AV Test
AV Test helps users make educated decisions about what antivirus they should use. They rank each antivirus on three factors using a scale from 0 to 6, where 6 is the best. The three elements they test for are Protection, Performance, and Usability. So how did Windows Defender fare?
Pretty well, it seems.
Clonezilla windows 10 download. In April 2018 Windows Defender scored 5.5 across the three categories, but the tests from December 2018 actually showed an improvement in protection – giving it full marks. That technically gives it the same “Protection” and “Performance” ratings as antivirus giants like Avast, Avira and AVG.
In real terms, according to AV Test, Windows Defender currently offers 99.6% protection against zero-day malware attacks. Out of 1.5 million samples, Defender detected seven legitimate bits of software as malware in November, which was a little worse than the industry average of five.
So Windows Defender is certainly capable of mixing it up with the big boys, which may come as a surprise to those who knew of it several years ago as a somewhat rudimentary solution.
AV Comparatives
It’s hardly representative to look at just one website, though, as AV Tests’ means of testing and criteria will differ slightly from another. On that note, another popular website for antivirus testing is AV Comparatives. Can Windows Defender carry its impressive form over to this site?
Looking at the real-world protection tests, the results are again pretty good. AV Comparatives carried out its tests using a mix of malicious URLs, drive-by downloads, and URLs redirecting users to malware. Windows Defender had a 0% compromise rate, which was better than the 0.5% rate with Avast and AVG, and up there with the flawless scores of Avira, Bitdefender and McAfee.
Compared with previous years, Windows Defender has drastically improved in blocking “user-dependent” malware – so malware where Windows gives a warning to the user but still gives the option of executing it. In April 2018 the rate of user-dependent malware was 3.6%. In July through November 2018 this dropped down to an average of 0.8%
Where Windows Defender has slipped quite badly is in detecting false positives, where it now has by far the highest rate of all the major antivirus software out there. It clocked 106 false positives from July through November 2018 – more than double that of the second-worst AV in this regard.
These two trends could be correlated, with an increase in false positives and a much better blocking of user-dependent malware being the result of tighter security measures through Windows Defender. Of course, other software shows that you can score well in both these categories, so that’s the next thing Microsoft should be aiming for – cutting down false positives while maintaining high security.
Much Better than It Used to Be
Small hiccups aside, historical data on both AV Test and AV Comparatives shows a marked improvement in Windows Defender’s performance over the years.
Back in October 2015, Windows Defender received the joint-lowest rating for Protection (3.5/6), amounting to just 95% protection against 0-day malware attacks. (This was an alarming 80.5% in September 2015.) The industry average at the time was 97.2%, so Windows Defender was decidedly trailing the pack.
At AV Comparatives, meanwhile, Windows Defender had a 3% compromise rate from July through November 2016. That has been almost directly replaced by the possibility of “user-dependent” security compromises in 2018, which still isn’t perfect but a huge improvement.
Use Windows Defender With Antivirus Windows 10
The Verdict: A Sturdy Defence
Just a few years ago you’d have been laughed off for suggesting that it was enough for you to sit back, install no third-party AV software, and let Windows take care of defending your PC. While we wouldn’t encourage complacency, Windows Defender is now well-proven as a viable antivirus option unto itself.
Use Windows Defender With Another Antivirus
However, if you want to err on the side of caution, there would be no harm in adding an extra layer of protection over Windows Defender, just to eliminate the minute possibility that something could sneak through the net.
But do you need to worry if all you have is Windows Defender? No, not any more. However, the malware landscape is always shifting, and we’ll keep an eye out for developments that suggest otherwise.
This article was first published in February 2017 and was updated in February 2019.
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