According to the latest AV-Test tests, Microsoft’s free protection integrated as standard in Windows is still on a par with the best antiviruses on the market, even paying ones. What to wonder about their necessity…
The question is recurring, not to say eternal: what is the best antivirus for Windows? If the complex debate regularly agitates experts by fueling controversy, many agree that popular security suites signed by specialized publishers – Avast, AVG, Avira, Bitdefender, Kaspersky, McAfee or Norton, for example – sufficient for the needs of individuals – the case of companies being very different. Of course, paid software – by subscription – offers better guarantees than free, due to greater responsiveness to new threats, in particular ramsonware which has been wreaking havoc for several years.
Faced with the tenors of security, Microsoft has long had a bad reputation with its solution for Windows. Formerly called Windows Defender, its free protection indeed obtained significantly worse results than those of software from specialists. So much so that the use of another security tool was essential in practice to ensure security worthy of the name on a PC. But it hasn’t been the same for a few years now. Enriched and renamed Windows Security, Microsoft’s protection – still free and integrated as standard in Windows 10 and 11 – is now even one of the best solutions on the market.
Windows security: the best PC protection?
It is AV-Test who noticed it in 2018. And who has confirmed it since. In its long-term tests (see details and methodology on the institute’s website), the very serious independent German institute has regularly awarded the coveted Top Product mention to the Microsoft solution, which is on a par with reference software, including paid ones! In its last tests carried out in December 2021 on PCs with Windows 10, Windows Security even scores top marks in each section, such as tools from Avira, Bitdefender, Kaspersky or McAfee. The free solution even does better than Avast, AVG and Norton. What shake certain convictions and stimulate competition. A legitimate question then arises: why install another tool when Microsoft’s security guard suffices?
If it is not easy to decide – the experts will argue that the solutions of specialized companies are more efficient and more reactive, because they exploit advanced technologies based on powerful online tools -, it is clear that Microsoft has made enormous progress in terms of security in recent years, as the tests of the German institute prove, in particular with the implementation of a sandbox (sandbox), a confined environment allowing the analysis of elements at risk without jeopardizing the rest of the system, as the security engineers of the Redmond firm explained at the time on their blog. And if the best protection for a computer is still between the seat and the screen, it is reasonable to think that Windows Security is more than enough for most “ordinary” users on a day-to-day basis.