AV-Comparatives finds Microsoft Defender has one of the poorest offline detection rates

Anti-malware assessment company AV-Comparatives has released its latest March 2022 report today. The report has found that Microsoft's in-house Defender anti-virus has one of the poorest offline detection rates of just 60.3%. Meanwhile G DATA has topped the chart with 98.6%. This means Microsoft Defender relies heavily on cloud-based protection.

The online detection and protection rates for the Microsoft product, however, are amongst the best. In case you are wondering what the difference between protection and detection is, here's how AV-Comparatives defines the two:

The File Detection Test we performed in previous years was a detection-only test. That is to say, it only tested the ability of security programs to detect a malicious program file before execution.

[..] This Malware Protection Test checks not only the detection rates, but also the protection capabilities, i.e. the ability to prevent a malicious program from actually making any changes to the system.

You can find the full comparison of the various anti-malware solutions for offline and online detection rates as well as the protection rates in the image below:

Here's a breakdown of the protection rates for the various antivirus programs. A total of 10,040 malicious samples were used for the test:

Here's a full breakdown of the entire Malware Protection Test March 2022 data:

Aside from the Malware Protection Test, AV-Comparatives has also released data for what it calls the Real-World Protection Test that you can see in the image below. Here's how the firm distinguishes between the two:

In the Malware Protection Test, malicious files are executed on the system. While in the Real-World Protection Test the vector is the web, in the Malware Protection Test the vectors can be e.g. network drives, USB or cover scenarios where the malware is already on the disk.

Finally, we have the awards that the various tested anti-virus programs have received. Here Microsoft Defender has received the highest praise as it has got the ADVANCED+ award. Incidentally, none of the products has received the ADVANCED award.

You can find more details on the tests at the source links below.

Source: AV-Comparatives (1 , 2)

AV-Comparatives finds Microsoft Defender has one of the poorest offline detection rates