If until now Microsoft Defender won all the votes from sites specializing in antivirus tests, this is no longer the case today. Thus, according to AV-Comparatives, Microsoft’s antivirus is now behind most free antiviruses such as AVG or Avira. So Microsoft Defender, a little drop in shape?
AV-Comparatives, a site that constantly analyzes all security solutions, has just published its latest report. Antimalware Microsoft Defender, which is free and comes installed by default on Windows 11 and Windows 10, usually does well. Usually, it beats all competing and free solutions.
Last March, for example, Windows Defender was recognized as the best antivirus under Windows 10 by the AVTest laboratory. AV-Comparatives also awards it the prize for free security solutions. But bad luck: this month, Microsoft Defender is doing worse than other antiviruses. If the application remains reliable in most cases, it is less effective than the others when it comes to false positives.
Read also: Microsoft Defender – here’s how to prevent the antivirus from dropping the performance of your PC
Microsoft Defender lags behind, AVG, Avast and Avira do better than it
Thus, the Microsoft tool obtains a success rate of 99% in terms of blocking malware. A result identical to that which Microsoft Defender had obtained during the last test. But things get complicated when it comes to false positives. For the record, these are applications or files detected as being potentially dangerous by the antivirus, but which in reality are not. Thus, while Microsoft Defender had hitherto been flawless (0 false positives), the application detected 2 false positives.
The competing solutions that are AVG, Avast or Avira today overtake Microsoft Defender. All these security solutions have seen an improvement in their antiviral detection system compared to the previous test period. But then, why is Microsoft Defender performing worse this month? A few months ago, the antivirus detected the Microsoft Office suite as potentially dangerous. A false positive, of course, but Microsoft had then deployed a patch that solved the problem. Today, it is possible that this patch is now causing confusion, with the antivirus then finding more false positives than it should.
Despite everything, Microsoft Defender remains a very good security solution, even in the face of paid offers. If it does not match applications like those offered by Bitdefender, Kaspersky or G Data, Microsoft’s tool is able to match, or even surpass in some areas, solutions like NortonLifeLock, Malwarebytes or Eset.
Source : AV-Comparatives
