A research firm has named Windows Defender (soon to be called Microsoft Defender) one of the top AntiVirus offerings. Considering that Defender is bundled alongside Windows software -you don’t have to pay a dime for it- makes the victory sweeter for both consumers and the team working on it.
Security researchers over at German institute AV-TEST, put 20 Antivirus products through their paces – ranking each one on performance, usability and protection. Windows Defender was tied for top spot alongside Kaspersky, Symantec and F-Secure Safe. All of these had perfect scores of 6 in the 3 categories previously mentioned.
If Windows Defender was not attractive to you before, then that should definitely be the case now considering it already comes built-in with your laptop and also comes at no cost.
I am yet to come across any information suggesting that competing antivirus alternatives are in trouble because of how good Windows Defender has become but if the situation remains the same it will be interesting to see how long alternatives can continue to offer paid services when the built-in free option is challenging their dominance.
