Certainly, by now they should all be, but you could encounter some that aren’t. The mode is switched automatically depending on whether another A/V is present on the machine or not. Windows Defender has two modes, active and passive. Let’s take a look at what happens when you install another A/V product onto Windows 10. In fact, Defender was recently credited with averting what could have been a massive worldwide cyberattack.įor those of you who aren’t there yet, you should know that Microsoft has made a big deal about Defender playing nice with other antivirus applications, but what that means is that Defender takes a backseat and you lose some significant security features. I’m going to argue that it’s the best way to protect your Windows 10 computers - in my MSP practice we’ve made the decision to not install any third party A/V onto Windows 10 computers. It is specifically designed to protect Windows 10 and does so by protecting not only against drive-by downloads, definitions, and definition-less behavior tracking but it also protects against fileless malware running in memory via bad WMI, PowerShell, vbscript, and DLL’s.

(I’m sure some Microsoft person just cringed.) But now it’s a full-fledged antivirus, antimalware, anti-ransomware protection machine that is built-in and free. For several years it kind of sat there and didn’t do much. Microsoft has stuck to it with Windows Defender.

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