Kaspersky Labs has removed Microsoft products from the top of its list of products that are extremely vulnerable. That being said, just how good is Microsoft’s built-in Windows Defender anti-virus solution at keeping you safe? BitDefender, a rival anti-virus company, wanted to prove that things weren’t very secure at all. They determined that a stock out-of-box Windows 8 configuration had just about 15% of top 100 malware families affect the machines. As you would imagine, BitDefender syas that blocking 85% of threats isn’t good enough. Honestly though, many commercial anti-virus solutions out there only have about 85-90% accuracy from blocking out all major malware— so really there plan to discredit Microsoft’s attempts kind of backfired, at least in my opinion. Sure, you might be able to find better, but for a free solution that is up and running out of the box, it is really hard to complain about this. In contrast, the Windows 7 version of the anti-spyware Defender (which isn’t a full anti-virus solution in Windows 7) only could keep out 32% of the malware tested on it out of the box without another antivirus solution running. Either way, going from 32% blocking out of the box with Windows 7 to 85% with Windows 8 is an achievement that Microsoft should be proud of. Windows 8 clearly is an improvement in security, that much is obvious. Personally I’ve been happy using nothing but Security Essentials in Windows 7 and Defender in Windows 8, both without issue. What antivirus/malware solution do you run in Windows? [ source ]]]>
