![]() Choosing any antivirus software first involves figuring out what you need. That seems like an evasive answer, but it's not. Ultimately, deciding on whether Microsoft Defender Antivirus is good enough depends on you. Some also toss in identity theft protection services, VPNs, backup software and cloud storage. If you have a multi-platform household and are willing to spend a bit more, you can shell out for one of the best internet security suites, which bundle in antivirus software for Mac and Android devices and generally come with parental controls and password managers as well. You don't need to spend a lot, or even anything at all - one of the most impressive antivirus programs we've seen is Kaspersky Security Cloud Free. These third-party antivirus programs protect all browsers equally well, and detect threats in all kinds of applications, not just Microsoft's. If you're comfortable with all this - and in our experience, Edge is lighter and faster than Chrome - then Microsoft Defender Antivirus and the related protections built into Windows 10 and 11 should absolutely be good enough to protect you from malware and give you a few useful extra security features as well.īut if you'd rather use Chrome or Firefox, Slack or Zoom, Google Workspace or LibreOffice instead of the corresponding Microsoft products, then it would be best to get one of the best Windows 10 (and 11) antivirus programs. You can also put Microsoft Family Safety apps on your children’s Android and iOS devices but this requires a paid subscription to Microsoft Office 365. Likewise, for the parental controls to work properly, your kids have to use Edge and no other browser on Windows. Microsoft does have browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox but they’re limited to machines running the Pro, Enterprise or Education versions of Windows 10 and Windows 11. To be fair though, the protection offered by Chrome and Firefox is pretty good on its own. Outpost flagged all of them, but a handful managed to connect despite its efforts.As a result, if your Chrome or Firefox browser is used to visit a malicious website, you’ll have to rely on the browser’s own protection, not Microsoft’s. Comodo didn't catch any of these, though its Behavior Blocker offered to isolate them. ZoneAlarm detected every single one of the leak test utilities I threw at it. Leak tests demonstrate these sneaky techniques without including a malicious payload. When Internet access is allowed only for trusted programs, some malicious programs try to connect by subverting a trusted program. If you do get a popup query from ZoneAlarm, look at it carefully and verify that the program is something you installed yourself. Now it uses the SmartDefense Advisor database to automatically configure access for a vast number of known programs. In ages past, ZoneAlarm was famous for bombarding the user with popups asking whether this or that program should be allowed Internet access. Norton and Kaspersky also handle all program control issues internally, without fobbing off security decisions on the user. Serious exploit protection generally comes with high-end firewalls like what you find in Norton Internet Security (2013) and Kaspersky Internet Security (2013). None of the 30 exploits I used actually compromised the full-patched test system, but ZoneAlarm didn't actively block them. Just to be sure, I turned on all of its alert options and attacked the test system using the Core IMPACT penetration tool. ![]() Like Comodo Firewall (2013), ZoneAlarm doesn't attempt to block exploit attacks at the network level. It resisted all of my port scan tests and other Web-based tests, though it didn't specifically report attacks the way Outpost Firewall Pro 8 did. ZoneAlarm correctly stealthed all of my test system's ports, making it invisible to outside attack. When I tried to disable its essential TrueVector service, I got an "access denied" message. It doesn't store status items like "firewall disabled" in the Registry, and I couldn't kill it using Task Manager. It's no surprise, then, that I couldn't disable its protection using attacks that might be replicated in software by evil coders. ![]() Tough, Practical Firewall ZoneAlarm pioneered the concept of hardening the firewall against interference by malicious programs.
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