Windows Defender Achieves 'Best Antivirus' Status (pcmag.com) 101
An anonymous reader quotes a report from PC Magazine: As Softpedia reports, the independent IT security institute AV-TEST spent May and June continuously evaluating 20 home user security products using their default settings to see which offered the best protection. Only four of those products achieved a top score, and one of them was Windows Defender. The other three are F-Secure SAFE 17, Kaspersky Internet Security 19.0, and Norton Security 22.17. The big difference between these and Windows Defender is the fact Microsoft includes Windows Defender for free with Windows 10, where as the others require a paid subscription to continue being fully-functional. "Of the other products evaluated, Webroot SecureAnywhere 9.0 came last," adds PC Magazine. "Those just missing out on the top score while still earning an AV-TEST 'Top Product' award include Avast Free AntiVirus 19.5, AVG Internet Security 19.5, Bitdefender Internet Security 23.0, Trend Micro Internet Security 15.0, and VIPRE AdvancedSecurity 11.0."
The only use for AV rankings (Score:1)
Is giving you an ordered list of who paid the publishing entity more or less than the competitors.
Windows defender is an after thought (Score:1, Interesting)
The fact that it basically only start working after the infected file is already on your PC, is an issue.
A good firewall will come a long way to protect you, a lot more than a plain anti virus.
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How does a firewall protect against malware contained in email attachments? How does a firewall protect you against malware on USB drives? Those are probably the biggest methods of malware infection after all.
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windows defender operates like EVERY ANTIVIRUS PROGRAM.. with realtime protection and detection; and software firewalls are nearly worthless for protection from malware and viruses when you're behind even a consumer-grade router. you only need it on if you're connecting to untrusted networks and wifi or with a public-facing ip.
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As a whitelist-based antivirus, PC Matic has too many false positives for anybody who uses a computer for more than just Office and web browsing.
Deceptive Title, MS not rated "Best" (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot is reproducing PCMag/Softpedia's deceptive framing,
MS was never rated as "best" in cited study, where it was rated EQUAL to others.
The "best AV status" is merely fabrication of PCMag/Softpedia editorializing.
Regarding their claim MS offers more than others' free version does,
I seriously doubt that claim which isn't substantiated re: specific functional difference.
I know Kaspersky's free AV has basically no difference in core AV functionality,
what their paid tiers include are things like VPN and identity protection etc.,
which while certainly valuable for many people, aren't legit metrics to rate AV program.
And I imagine the metric used by AV-TEST didn't use them, because they aren't AV function.
So this is yet another example of deceptive media framing, using one reasonable source,
and segueing into unsubstantiatable opinion without even a specific person owning the claim,
see reporting on world events where they retreat into weasel words "observers agree...",
pushing agenda even when it contradicts details of their own reporting, because THE NARRATIVE.
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That's a lot of speculation when you could have just read the article. The term "best" here is used as a category. Defender sits alongside Kaspersky, Bitdefender and others as "best" meaning they got perfect scores.
The amount of time it took you to write that mumbo jumbo you could have just read the article and not looked like a fucking drama queen.
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What makes you think he didn't read "the" article, when its two articles really ?
Furthermore, PCmag states: There's clearly a lot of choice on the antivirus market and most of the options offer good protection, but Microsoft is now setting a very high bar. It beats most of the competition and is completely free for Windows 10 users. while his criticism is that the competition offer free versions that are just as good.
It seems that it's you who need to read the articles.
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What makes you think he didn't read "the" article, when its two articles really ?
Furthermore, PCmag states: There's clearly a lot of choice on the antivirus market and most of the options offer good protection, but Microsoft is now setting a very high bar. It beats most of the competition and is completely free for Windows 10 users. while his criticism is that the competition offer free versions that are just as good.
It seems that it's you who need to read the articles.
You win for dumbest jackoff on the internet
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No slashdot is NOT reproducing PCMag/Softpedia's deceptive framing. This is purely slashdots framing. The actual article does not make the claim of best at all, it says "one of the best" and Top rated which are correct. Only slashdot with it usual clickbait bullshit has altered that in the summary. PCMag by comparison doesn't even go as far as one of the best just that it scored well and has come a long way.
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None of these tests are very useful anyway. They just run a bunch of malware and see what the AV apps manage to block, or even worse scan a load of malware files and see how many of them deleted.
None of them test realistic threats like new unknown malware that isn't in the database already, or halting ransomware as it tries to encrypt your files. None of them check the ability to block personal info leakage via the browser.
And the biggest oversight of all is that they never test the ability of the AV softwa
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I seriously doubt that claim which isn't substantiated
I don't. But I do doubt what "features" of defender were included. Are we talking virus scanning? Or are we also including Smartscreen for Edge (which is part of defender's updates), or the OneDrive based anti-randsomware system?
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I haven't used Kaspersky free (that I know of) but most other free AV programs (AVG, Avast, etc.) are always bugging you to either reapply for a new free license or to upgrade to their new version or upgrade to their paid version or...
Windows Defender just keeps working without all that nagging and updates silently in the background (or when you do your other Windows updates). Just the fact that Windows Defender is the least annoying AV program is why I use it. Now that it is also one of the top AV programs
Let's Limbo! (Score:1)
Talk about a low bar. Windows AV has pretty much always sucked, especially on home systems.
Even in corporate settings with thousands of deployed devices, the weak link has always been between the keyboard and the chair.
I'd be interested in how robust Windows Defender would be in a Zero Day situation.
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It's utterly irrelevant how any consumer AV performs in a zero day situation. Such attacks in modern times cost significant amount of money to conduct, and consumers are a low value high cost target.
Anyone with half a sense uses zero day attacks against high value targets only, because it's a high value attack. That's why major corporations with actually valuable IP/research data are as anal as it is about IT security.
For a typical home user sitting behind NAT, software firewall and on a windows machine, ab
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Even in corporate settings with thousands of deployed devices,
It's often worse in corporate settings, because for some reason they use Symantec (a once great company, sigh).
I'd be interested in how robust Windows Defender would be in a Zero Day situation.
Windows Defender will utterly fail against any decent zero day because the attacker can test the exploit and change it until they form it in a way that gets past Windows Defender. The attacker has all the advantages in that scenario.
spammers are killing slashdot (Score:5, Informative)
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The editors have an ability to delete posts. They have done so in the past and it's a curiosity why they allow the extreme spam happening. On some stories, like this one, the hate-based posts greatly outnumber on-topic posts.
Clearly it's one or more bots. Same wording between posts. Lots of repetition. Three are those BarbaraHudson ones. Maybe someone is trying to kill slashdot. Clearly they have beaten the captcha system as well as the already onerous posting time restrictions when you aren't logged in.
Why
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Well, maybe there should be Mod options for "I disagree" or "I don't like what you are saying" (or "what you are saying is simply incorrect").
I read Slashdot at -1 for decades but had to abandon that just a couple of weeks ago, the noise:signal ratio got too annoying. Natalie Portman and goat.sx trolls were annoying enough 20-odd years ago but this feels worse. Is it time to stop permitting a/c posts?
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Yeah, the spam was better a long time ago. Even the old GNAA stuff had some originality. But now it seems to be following the general demeanor of the population. I mean, look at the low class of people that win elections. The deterioration is inevitable.
Is it time to stop permitting a/c posts?
Never! That's exactly what the biggest offenders and mass media want. We just have to develop better filters at the users' end.
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Pretending a problem doesn't exist doesn't help. When you browse through Slashdot stories and find one that looks like it's generating nice discussions, only to open the story and see a handful of posts because the rest of spamming garbage at -1 it doesn't really help Slashdot or its readers.
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The moderators are the worst when it comes to censorship. Far too many people use the "troll" mod as their personal "disagree" button, trying to hide views they find upsetting to their little snowflake sensibilities.
The deterioration of the moderation system, and the fact that the submission system is completely broken (due to more trolling and the fact that it tends to automatically flag a lot of good submissions as spam) is what is causing the decline in quality.
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Consumer Reports September 2019 says... (Score:2)
Malwarebytes scored terribly (Score:2)
McAfee also doesn't come out looking good for protection.
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The malwarebytes folks focus specifically on malware and not "viruses" etc. I don't think they've ever done well on these and most people run malwarebytes alongside other products for that reason.
McAfee deserve to burn though.
Not as bad as the disease (Score:5, Interesting)
It has been my AV of choice since before they integrated it because it was the only one I could live with. Others may be more effective, but I'd rather deal with the risk than suffer with other products that are too often "in my face" in various ways.
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Exactly the same reason I choose Defender as well on my personal devices, and recommend it to friends and family. Professionally it is a different story. I don't think it is mature for servers as of 2019
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Same. Though I'd go a step further and say it also isn't as much of a bloated resource hog as many of the other independent AV software, nor does it seem to interfere or visualize like a virus like many of the others. It is hard to often praise MS, however occasionally they do something right.
Best compared to What? (Score:2, Funny)
Surely the best anti-virus software is an OS that is so secure it doesn't need to run anti virus. We have at least two: iOS and Android.
The fact that Windows, OSX and desktop Linux are so insecure they naive users install viruses that can compromise the underlying OS is shameful. Microsoft shouting this from the roof tops is a like country telling the world it's citizens have access have the best iron lung available - when we all know the real solution a po
Re: Best compared to What? (Score:1)
Haha ha ha ha.. sorry, my gut hurts from laughing at that one.
First... a "virus" is something that is, by definition, not self-spreading. That would be a worm. And yes, while it's quite a bit rarer to have a Unix-based virus, worms are much more common on *nix (MacOS included). Does it really matter what the delivery system is when traditional AV is only looking at the payload?
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Hmmm (Score:2, Funny)
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You're doing something very wrong if your Windows 10 machine is bluescreening. Seriously I've seen more kernel Oops!s than Windows 10 BSODs, but I heard they come with a QR code now.
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Win10 has come a long way since the fragile Windows Vista and prior versions that would toss a BSOD for non-faulting memory or drivers. Windows 10 usually elegantly crashes the driver and just disables the hardware in question if it is non-critical, letting the keen know that they need to update the driver.
A good example, in my experience, intel wireless drivers do this a fair bit - because of course Windows 10 installed the newest driver that has irrelevant components to the card in question. Where before
Re: It is 2019. Windows still needs AV? Lol (Score:2)
Considering the velocity of new attacks and the hardware manufacturing cycle from parts to boxes, and the time for distribution, then itâ(TM)s a useless metric. Might as well take a 1930s phone of the box and demand why no operator is picking up to route your call.
good news (Score:2)
not only does defender detect virusses with the best of them, it is also less obstructive.
i don't use windows myself, but those windows pc's i do get in contact with, the virus scanner is sometimes almost as bad as the virusses it is protecting you from.
slowing down operations, popping up notifications, etc.
defender basically runs and stays out of your way most of the time. at least, that is what i found in my limited experience.
all this, for free, nothing but good news (for windows users).
PRISM (Score:1)