Microsoft Windows can be secured against new malware threats — provided users don’t rely on the free antivirus software that’s included with the operating system.
That’s one of the takeaways from an endpoint security study released this week by independent German lab AV-Test.
The researchers evaluated 28 antivirus products against three criteria: protection, repair and usability. Products could earn up to six points in each category for a possible total of 18 points. After tallying the results, AV-Test reported that “Bitdefender, Kaspersky Lab and Symantec lead the field while the protection packages from Avast, F-Secure and GData share fourth place.”
Still, all of the products earned top scores of 15.2 points or more — which stood in sharp contrast to the performance of Microsoft’s free offerings. “The test results of these [six] products alone are all nearly five points higher than the overall result obtained by Microsoft’s Windows Defender or Security Essentials when used together with the Windows Firewall,” reported AV-Test. “This proves that the use of external security solutions can lead to a massive improvement when it comes to system protection.”