Re: Serious question from MS users
The MS Defender that is provided by default is now pretty good since since Windows 10.
That said it can be a resource hog when it does a full scan but it is built in, requires no configuration and is "free".
It is not as comprehensive as many other products but to get all the bells and whistles that are used as reasons to upgrade, you have to pay. It is my opinion that most of the bells and whistles are snake oile anyway.
Then you have the likes of CrowdStrike, Webroot and the other "modern" AV products that claim to do everything "in the cloud" so a naturally "much better". When I did a trial of Crowdstrike I could not even get it to find EICAR or another genuine script payload. They are all shite, relying on funky interfaces and all sorts of graphs and metrics to make you believe they are doing something.
As a paid product I like Malwarbytes and use it in conjunction with Defender. It appears to off a reasonable compromise.
As for free AV solutions, with software like this, nothing is ever free.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
