Solved Defender Getting Better?

CornishRattler said:

Microsoft Defender beats out several heavyweight rivals in the latest AV-TEST ranking

In the latest December 2021 AV-TEST anti-virus ranking for home users, Microsoft Windows Defender has outscored some of its rival anti-malware products, showing relative improvement since last time.

www.neowin.net

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'Getting' better? not really, it has been getting straight 6's and a Top Product rating from AV-Test for years. Here it was in December 2020

CornishRattler said:

Microsoft Defender beats out several heavyweight rivals in the latest AV-TEST ranking

In the latest December 2021 AV-TEST anti-virus ranking for home users, Microsoft Windows Defender has outscored some of its rival anti-malware products, showing relative improvement since last time.

www.neowin.net

Click to expand...

Hi there

These "Post" analysis reports --especially 2 months on are about as much use as using Horse racing results from 2 or 3 months ago to predict next weeks winners.

Remember a new threat could appear at any time rendering all previous results meaningless. In any case people - especially Windows users - use their computers in so many different ways and have so much different hardware and software that these results are pretty pointless anyway. Probably written by journos without much else to write about.

That said WD has for a long time now been more than sufficient for most typical Windows users who aren't on corporate networks, or providing cloud services, Internet database services, e-commerce etc.

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

Hi there

These "Post" analysis reports --especially 2 months on are about as much use as using Horse racing results from 2 or 3 months ago to predict next weeks winners.

Remember a new threat could appear at any time rendering all previous results meaningless. In any case people - especially Windows users - use their computers in so many different ways and have so much different hardware and software that these results are pretty pointless anyway. Probably written by journos without much else to write about.

That said WD has for a long time now been more than sufficient for most typical Windows users who aren't n corporate networks, or providing cloud services, Internet database services, e-commerce etc.

Cheers
jimbo

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True, it's a reactive sector I suppose, I do remember the time when you got a new PC the first thing you did was ditch MSE and install something else, MS even bundled another AV provider trial in.

CornishRattler said:

True, it's a reactive sector I suppose, I do remember the time when you got a new PC the first thing you did was ditch MSE and install something else, MS even bundled another AV provider trial in.

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I remember when a lot of I.T management used to read Gartner reports and base decisions on what they contained. I usually found if you read those reports and dis the EXACT OPPOSITE you far far more likely to be correct !!!!.

Anyway have a good day -- -5 deg C here with some snow likely !!!!! Think I need another trip to Southern California !!!

Cheers
jimbo

How can the test and test results be meaningful at all? Of the 20 products tested, 14 received the TOP designation. Maybe 6 did not pay enough

Well, someone must need something better than Windows Defender.

The US Treasury says Ransomware payouts in 2021 exceeded $5.2 Billion dollars for a three-year tracking period.

You can have your opinions about when, why, how, etc. but regardless there are still people getting infected daily around the globe that have and use Windows Defender as their main security protection.

Even if you think it will never happen to you (you may be right) it's a possibility and if you don't have your data backed up properly so that the ransomware cannot get to it then you may find your luck simply ran out.

There are underground groups that daily run tools to scan and make sure that no security product can detect their program. Then they sell that in a marketplace arena type operation. Exploits are found all the time and not all of them are reported, they're often used in such attacks until finally they're noticed, and then Microsoft or whoever the attack was directed at fixes the exploit. In the meantime those people that got attacked and did not have good, proper backups lost ALL of their data.

Look at these Black Hat events that go on every year. Microsoft, Macintosh, and Linux all fall to some type of exploit, and the attackers gain root access often within minutes or less and these are on fully protected and up to date systems. Just saying, no box is as protected as you may think it is. The right person or team simply hasn't chosen to target you.

It has been getting better with each feature update since Windows 10 first came out. It is now rated very highly and most home users don't need anything more. It has ransomware protection but no security product is guaranteed to protect you against something brand new that the criminal scum come up with.

I am not going to profess to know what is or is not better, but IMO I think Windows Defender is a hell of a lot better than it used to be.
For the record, I use both WD and Malwarebytes Premium.
I still believe no matter how secure and safe you believe your system to be, the biggest flaw in the whole process is the individual operating the keyboard.

CornishRattler said:

True, it's a reactive sector I suppose, I do remember the time when you got a new PC the first thing you did was ditch MSE and install something else, MS even bundled another AV provider trial in.

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Absolutely. Microsoft's early efforts were pretty pitiful and some people are unaware of how Defender has improved by leaps and bounds. It has gotten better with each successive feature update since Windows 10 first hit the scene. Gone are the days of MSE and the useless Windows 7 version of Defender.