Microsoft finally gets one past as Defender does great in AV-Comparatives' protection test

Microsoft finally has something to rejoice. If you are wondering what this is about, the latest antivirus product test rankings for both AV-TEST and AV-Comparatives were released recently. In the AV-TEST results, Microsoft came in last place due to how badly Defender was impacting Windows 11 system performance, which was quite contrary to how Defender has generally been doing previously in the Windows 10 tests. And it was double bad news for Microsoft as AV-Comparatives also placed Microsoft in the last place on its podium due to the very poor showing in its October 2022 Performance test which was conducted on Windows 10.

Things are again looking up for Microsoft in AV-Comparatives' Real-world protection test. Unlike the previous Performance test, which measured the performance impact of an antivirus program, the Real-world test gauges the ability of an anti-malware solution to detect and block real threats. The test also measures the number of false positives, even those that are user-dependent. These are quantified by the FP Score and the higher the score, the worse. User-dependent false positives are assigned half points.

You can view the FP Scores of all the tested products, including Microsoft's which has seven false positives:

Up next, we have the Protection Rate, which measures how many malicious sample test cases were successfully blocked by each product. Out of the total 626 test cases, Defender was able to detect and block 623:

Finally, we have the AV-Comparatives certifications and expectedly, Microsoft received the ADVANCED+ rating. Overall, it looks like ESET did the worst in terms of detections, as it was compromised seven times out of 626. Malwarebytes however got the worst certification, ie, TESTED, due to the highest number of false positives on top of six compromises.

You can view the full report on AV-Comparatives' website.

Microsoft finally gets one past as Defender does great in AV-Comparatives' protection test