It’s hardly representative to look at just one website, though, as AV Tests’ means of testing and criteria will differ slightly from another.

There wasn’t even a huge amount of room for improvement from last year, but Windows Defender has managed it, now ranking among the best of the best antiviruses on this site. For perspective, the industry average is three, and this time last year Windows Defender detected seven. It’s particularly improved by cutting down on false flags, confusing only two bits of legitimate software for malware. In real terms, according to AV Test, Windows Defender currently offers 100-percent protection against zero-day malware attacks.

That’s a marked improvement, especially as out of the 18 AV apps tested, only three of them – Norton Security, Kaspersky, BullGuard – got full marks across the board. In December 2019, Windows Defender maintained its perfect security score, while bumping up its usability to full marks too. In December 2018, Windows Defender scored 6 for security and 5.5 for performance and usability. The three elements they test for are protection, performance, and usability. They rank each antivirus on three factors using a scale from 0 to 6, where 6 is the best. AV TestĪV Test helps users make educated decisions about what antivirus they should use. Thankfully, there are several sites dedicated to comparing antivirus software on a monthly basis. 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. Talking about Windows Defender in isolation won’t get us anywhere. We’ve done this for a couple of years now so we can compare Windows Defender’s performance with how it did the previous year. To test this, we’ve gathered data from a few of the most rigorous antivirus testing sites to see how Windows Defender compares to the most popular third-party antivirus software.

How good is windows defender reddit