Is Windows Defender good enough? Will it protect you against advanced and sophisticated malware, or should you invest in premium antivirus software?
These days, cybercriminals have become a lot more ruthless, and subsequently, cyberattacks have become the order of the day. According to reliable statistics, a cyber-attack occurs every 39 seconds. The AV-TEST institute claims to detect over 350,000 new malware samples every single day. Also, it’s been reported that Google discovers about 50 malicious websites every week. These are scary statistics, and since every internet user is a potential victim, it’s your responsibility alone to protect your devices and data from these attacks by using reliable antivirus software.
Windows Defender is one of the most popular names in the world of antivirus software, and, unsurprisingly, its name often springs up in antivirus conversations. However, its popularity doesn’t necessarily equate to efficiency, as doubts have been cast over its performance. Even though Microsoft recently improved it, the fact that it’s free remains to trigger skepticism in users, and rightly so. And as we have found out through experience, things rarely end well with free antivirus solutions. And while Windows Defender may not be selling your data to third parties as some free solutions do, there are question marks all over its ability to serve advanced antivirus needs.
Let's take a look at some of the reasons, why people choose premium antivirus software over Windows Defender?
The first advantage held by paid solutions over free ones like Windows defender is the advanced security-enhancing features they come with. Paid antivirus solutions often come with a slew of excellent tools and features for your digital protection. These include a VPN, a full-blown password manager, file shredding and encryption features, parental controls, identity theft protection, microphone, and webcam protection, and even cloud storage. Advanced ransomware protection and anti-phishing protection are also integrated into premium suites.
Hackers often design ransomware to lock and encrypt your data, making it unusable until you pay a ransom. Thankfully, the anti-ransomware feature can discover these threats and prevent them from getting hold of your data. Anti-phishing features protect you against untrusted and malicious websites that can steal your personal and financial data. Another advantage of using a premium antivirus is that they offer multi-layered malware protection. With the intensity of malware attacks nowadays, single-layered protection is no longer enough. To provide stronger protection, paid solutions offer multiple layers of protection. This makes a lot of sense as it means even if malware can breach a layer, there will always be another layer to protect you.
Also, most paid antivirus programs are designed to automatically update themselves so that you can be protected against new malware threats as soon as they emerge. Another upside is that paid suites are extremely efficient when it comes to the impact on system performance. In the past, antivirus programs used to be resource-hungry applications, often putting too much stress on computers and causing them to run slowly. It was so terrible that some people would prefer to risk having a virus on their computers than having to cope with antivirus programs. Thankfully, premium solutions have now been optimized to have the minimum impact on your system performance; they can now run efficiently in the background without getting in your way.
Another huge reason why people opt for premium programs is due to their multi-platform compatibility. With most people owning different devices nowadays, there are chances that all your devices don’t run on the same operating system. If that’s the case, there is no cause to worry. You don’t have to buy antivirus software separately for each device. With a single license, you can protect your devices running on different platforms like Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android, which is a major advantage. It gives your complete peace of mind and great value for your money.
Finally, premium customers get priority support. With a paid antivirus product, you get advanced technical support, with most companies giving higher priority to their paid users. Most times, you will have multiple support channels through which you can instantly get your issues resolved, like live chat, phone, and email support. There is nothing better than knowing that you have a reliable team of experts you can readily contact when you encounter issues.
Having highlighted the different benefits provided by premium antivirus solutions, let’s look at where Windows Defender lacks.
As you can guess, the first major problem with Windows Defender is the lack of advanced features. Windows Defender only provides a limited number of features, which are not sufficient for all-around digital protection. A lot of key protection-rated features and utility features are missing from the product. And there are no indications that these features will be added anytime soon.
Windows Defender is also somewhat limited when it comes to malware protection. The program is primarily designed to target viruses, so it often fails to detect and prevent other threats like ransomware and browser exploits. While it may protect you from viruses, it leaves you susceptible to many other forms of malware. Needless to say, that is not good enough. Also, when it comes to malware protection and the impact on system performance, Windows Defender used to be very mediocre in the past. Its malware detection rates were unimpressive, and it used to have a significant impact on system performance.
Third-party products like Norton, Bitdefender, McAfee, and Avast were miles ahead of the Windows Defender in this race, as evident from the independent tests conducted by trusted organizations like AV-TEST and AV-Comparatives. But recently, Windows Defender saw major improvements, and now, its performance is at least comparable to other top products in the antivirus arena. However, there is still a long way to go for Windows Defender and a lot of improvements are needed.
In many independent tests carried out recently, Windows Defender returned more false positives than most of its peers. The implication of this is that you can’t trust it completely as it can mistakenly detect a harmless file as malware. Users will have to whitelist that particular file so that the antivirus program realizes that it is harmless. All things considered, your best bet when looking for an antivirus suite to protect your computer would be a premium solution.
But the question is: which antivirus software should you choose?
With the abundance of antivirus software out there, things can quickly become overwhelming for a new user these days. At the moment, Norton is our number one antivirus software, thanks to its range of excellent features, flawless anti-malware security, and minimal system performance impact. On top of that, you have a range of reasonably-priced plans to choose from, giving you incredible value for money. Overall, the 360 Deluxe suite is the sweet spot for most people in the Norton lineup. Apart from coming with a range of incredible features like secure VPN, dark web monitoring, and password manager, the plan also offers a whopping 50GB of cloud storage, which is great.
Bitdefender is our second-best pick, while McAfee ranks third on our list of best antivirus software. If Bitdefender tickles your fancy, we recommend the Total Security Suite. It also delivers outstanding performance when it comes to malware protection, along with many excellent features. Norton 360 Deluxe slightly edges Bitdefender Total Security when it comes to features. But the latter is more affordable, so it may be a perfect fit if you are on a budget.
Whichever antivirus product you choose, your computer will be safe from malware threats as both are known for their impeccable malware protection.
