Do I need additional antivirus protection for Windows 11?

PMB · Feb 17, 2023

I'm still in the initial steps of setting up my new PC and transferring stuff over from the old one. The old one was a Windows 10 PC and the new one is Windows 11 - my first experience with Windows 11.

Years ago, way back in XP days, (or maybe before) I subscribed to Norton Antivirus, and the subscription is renewed annually. Over and over we have been told to make sure we have good, solid antivirus protection on our computers and keep it up to date. So I did.

But Norton, has changed hands and and evolved into more than just antivirus protection. And the IT world has evolved too, not always for the best. So the Norton product - now Norton 360 - has become, in my opinion, bloated with lots of additional things I did not want, but ended up having. And they have their toe-in-the-door so to speak, that pops up scary little messages about performance problems, identity theft, etc. advertising to keep me using their product, to encourage me to use more of their product (cloud backup - no thank you, password vault - no thank you, VPN - no thank you, browsing protection - no thank you). I just wanted antivirus, and maybe malware protection.

So, my question: Is the antivirus & malware protection that comes with Windows 11 sufficient? I'm paid up for the remainder of the calendar year with Norton, and I have unused installs, but I wonder if I want to turn that loose on my new PC.

Peter

LynniePad · Feb 17, 2023

PMB said:
I'm still in the initial steps of setting up my new PC and transferring stuff over from the old one. The old one was a Windows 10 PC and the new one is Windows 11 - my first experience with Windows 11.

Years ago, way back in XP days, (or maybe before) I subscribed to Norton Antivirus, and the subscription is renewed annually. Over and over we have been told to make sure we have good, solid antivirus protection on our computers and keep it up to date. So I did.

But Norton, has changed hands and and evolved into more than just antivirus protection. And the IT world has evolved too, not always for the best. So the Norton product - now Norton 360 - has become, in my opinion, bloated with lots of additional things I did not want, but ended up having. And they have their toe-in-the-door so to speak, that pops up scary little messages about performance problems, identity theft, etc. advertising to keep me using their product, to encourage me to use more of their product (cloud backup - no thank you, password vault - no thank you, VPN - no thank you, browsing protection - no thank you). I just wanted antivirus, and maybe malware protection.

So, my question: Is the antivirus & malware protection that comes with Windows 11 sufficient? I'm paid up for the remainder of the calendar year with Norton, and I have unused installs, but I wonder if I want to turn that loose on my new PC.

For me, Windows Defender has provided excellent protection for some years. This seems to be consensus on the PC forum. Defender updates come together with OS updates.

Norton was fine years ago when it was just NAV, but the evolution to NIS and N360 was not welcome.

I uninstalled Norton several years ago and haven’t regretted doing that. You might have a little trouble cancelling your subscription. Be persistent.

Ho72 · Feb 17, 2023

Most people seem to feel that Defender is good enough but, as someone who uses the paid version of Malwarebytes, I can tell you that its real time protection catches nasties that Defender does not. An extra layer of protection is not a bad thing.

--
Sometimes I look at posts from people I've placed on my IGNORE list. When I do, I'm quickly reminded of why I chose to ignore them in the first place.

Austinian · Feb 17, 2023

PMB said:
So, my question: Is the antivirus & malware protection that comes with Windows 11 sufficient? I'm paid up for the remainder of the calendar year with Norton, and I have unused installs, but I wonder if I want to turn that loose on my new PC.

I gave up on third-party A/V products some time ago due to conflicts with Windows' internals I found disturbing, and questions raised by developers as to vulnerabilities within the A/V products themselves.

Since then I've only used Defender for real-time A/V and Malwarebytes Free as a file scanner only. No malware problems seen so far on any of our PCs.

bridge77 · Feb 17, 2023

Austinian said:
PMB said:

So, my question: Is the antivirus & malware protection that comes with Windows 11 sufficient? I'm paid up for the remainder of the calendar year with Norton, and I have unused installs, but I wonder if I want to turn that loose on my new PC.

Click to expand...

I gave up on third-party A/V products some time ago due to conflicts with Windows' internals I found disturbing, and questions raised by developers as to vulnerabilities within the A/V products themselves.

Since then I've only used Defender for real-time A/V and Malwarebytes Free as a file scanner only. No malware problems seen so far on any of our PCs.

Malwarebytes free here also; an important setting inside this program is to tell it to coexist with Windows Defender when installing. this seems to keep both programs from conflicting with each other.

after the Trial version of malwarebytes is up, it seems the program only works when it is told to scan. Defender seems to work full time, when i tried to install an infected program it stepped in and stopped the issue recently.

jpegman · Feb 17, 2023

Ho72 said:
Most people seem to feel that Defender is good enough but, as someone who uses the paid version of Malwarebytes, I can tell you that its real time protection catches nasties that Defender does not. An extra layer of protection is not a bad thing.

Windows defender and Malwarebytes are different products and to be "fully" (as much as one can) protected, one need to have both. They play nicely together and are recommended by just about everyone (except competitors like Avast, Norton360, McAfee, etc.)

Jpegman

BobKnDP · Feb 17, 2023

I use Windows Defender and Malwarebytes Free. I have set the latter to not load at Windows startup. I just do manual scans with it. I've found a few PuPs (potentially unwanted programs, usually adware) with it, but nothing more sinister.

Another necessity is caution. For example: if you get directed to a Web site that informs you that you have a virus and declares that a scan is necessary, bad things may happen if you let the "scan" proceed.

I'm not sure that Defender plus MWB would be adequate without the caution. If there are users who will click on everything on the Web indiscriminately, more may be needed. (I think of those all-in-one PCs marketed for use by seniors. They use a very locked-down Linux distro, apparently. I doubt that the OS allows anything new to be installed.)

bridge77 · Feb 17, 2023

Ho72 said:
Most people seem to feel that Defender is good enough but, as someone who uses the paid version of Malwarebytes, I can tell you that its real time protection catches nasties that Defender does not. An extra layer of protection is not a bad thing.

malwarebytes free works only in a manual scan mode i suppose. what does the paid version do? my guess that it is constantly on guard and needs no prompt from me to do some scanning.

thanks.

Austinian · Feb 17, 2023

bridge77 said:
Ho72 said:

Most people seem to feel that Defender is good enough but, as someone who uses the paid version of Malwarebytes, I can tell you that its real time protection catches nasties that Defender does not. An extra layer of protection is not a bad thing.

Click to expand...

malwarebytes free works only in a manual scan mode i suppose. what does the paid version do? my guess that it is constantly on guard and needs no prompt from me to do some scanning.

thanks.

Last time I looked, a while back, the free version of Malwarebytes had a (two week?) trial of the full version built-in.

Jestertheclown · Feb 17, 2023

Currently using; Windows 11, Defender and Malwarebytes Pro.

Actually, I've been using this set up since Windows 8.

Malwarebytes Pro does all the serious AV work with Defender running in the background which very, very occasionally catches something that Malwarebytes has missed but that is extremely rare.

"It's good to be . . . . . . . . . Me!"

AwkwardSwine · Feb 17, 2023

[No message]

Ho72 · Feb 17, 2023

bridge77 said:
malwarebytes free works only in a manual scan mode i suppose. what does the paid version do? my guess that it is constantly on guard and needs no prompt from me to do some scanning.

Yes, it's main advantages are continuous real time protection against malware/ransomware/exploits along with the ability to schedule custom scans.

Jon555 · Feb 19, 2023

PMB said:
I'm still in the initial steps of setting up my new PC and transferring stuff over from the old one. The old one was a Windows 10 PC and the new one is Windows 11 - my first experience with Windows 11.

Years ago, way back in XP days, (or maybe before) I subscribed to Norton Antivirus, and the subscription is renewed annually. Over and over we have been told to make sure we have good, solid antivirus protection on our computers and keep it up to date. So I did.

But Norton, has changed hands and and evolved into more than just antivirus protection. And the IT world has evolved too, not always for the best. So the Norton product - now Norton 360 - has become, in my opinion, bloated with lots of additional things I did not want, but ended up having. And they have their toe-in-the-door so to speak, that pops up scary little messages about performance problems, identity theft, etc. advertising to keep me using their product, to encourage me to use more of their product (cloud backup - no thank you, password vault - no thank you, VPN - no thank you, browsing protection - no thank you). I just wanted antivirus, and maybe malware protection.

So, my question: Is the antivirus & malware protection that comes with Windows 11 sufficient? I'm paid up for the remainder of the calendar year with Norton, and I have unused installs, but I wonder if I want to turn that loose on my new PC.

Peter

It depends on haw risk-adverse you are and whether you will pay attention to any prompts that come while you're busy. I would certainly go 3rd party as Defender is probably the #1 thing the virus writers are trying to get past.

I like to use Eset's NOD32 and I combine it with Malwarebytes Premium on my main PC, as they cover slightly different things and are designed to work together. If I was just having one it would be NOD32... (BTW their multi-machine/multi-year subscriptions are very cheap, although I have a lifetime licence for Malwarebytes so I guess the first copy of that is even cheaper...)

Sean Nelson · Feb 19, 2023

I just use Windows' built-in antivirus software. But I also rely on safe computing practices to limit the potential impact of malware:

I do regular weekly backups which I keep offline and which go back for over a year to guard against ransomware attacks.
I have unique passwords for every account
I do all my financial transactions in a virtual machine that is reset to its initial state on every use.
When I'm doing financial transactions I enter sensitive information such as passwords and credit card numbers by typing the characters out of sequence in order to foil keyboard loggers

To the best of my knowledge I've never been the victim of a malware attack, although Windows Defender has flagged and quarantined some files. For some reason these always seem to be in old install kits that I no longer use (but keep dragging around with me because I'm a bit of a packrat).

Billiam29 · Feb 19, 2023

Sean Nelson said:
I just use Windows' built-in antivirus software. But I also rely on safe computing practices to limit the potential impact of malware:

I do regular weekly backups which I keep offline and which go back for over a year to guard against ransomware attacks.

I have unique passwords for every account

I do all my financial transactions in a virtual machine that is reset to its initial state on every use.

When I'm doing financial transactions I enter sensitive information such as passwords and credit card numbers by typing the characters out of sequence in order to foil keyboard loggers

Don't forget...

Do not use a Windows login with administrator level permissions for your day-to-day computing activities. Said another way: the login you use for your normal daily computing activities should not be a member of the administrators group in Windows.

Sean Nelson · Feb 19, 2023

Billiam29 said:
Don't forget...

Do not use a Windows login with administrator level permissions for your day-to-day computing activities.

Yeah, for me that kinda goes without saying. But you're right that it's worth mentioning.

BobKnDP · Feb 19, 2023

Billiam29 said:
Sean Nelson said:

I just use Windows' built-in antivirus software. But I also rely on safe computing practices to limit the potential impact of malware:

I do regular weekly backups which I keep offline and which go back for over a year to guard against ransomware attacks.

I have unique passwords for every account

I do all my financial transactions in a virtual machine that is reset to its initial state on every use.

When I'm doing financial transactions I enter sensitive information such as passwords and credit card numbers by typing the characters out of sequence in order to foil keyboard loggers

Click to expand...

Don't forget...

Do not use a Windows login with administrator level permissions for your day-to-day computing activities. Said another way: the login you use for your normal daily computing activities should not be a member of the administrators group in Windows.

That's a good suggestion, which I have never followed. :-(

Sean Nelson · Feb 19, 2023

BobKnDP said:
BobKnDP said:

Don't forget...

Do not use a Windows login with administrator level permissions for your day-to-day computing activities. Said another way: the login you use for your normal daily computing activities should not be a member of the administrators group in Windows.

Click to expand...

That's a good suggestion, which I have never followed. :-(

It was more problematic in earlier releases, but in Windows 10 (and presumably 11) it's really no hassle. I basically never have to sign on to my administrator account. All the tasks I normally need to do, including installing programs, can be done from the unprivileged account as long as you are able to enter the password for the administrative account when the UAC prompt asks for it.

skyglider · Feb 19, 2023

Ho72 said:
Most people seem to feel that Defender is good enough but, as someone who uses the paid version of Malwarebytes, I can tell you that its real time protection catches nasties that Defender does not. An extra layer of protection is not a bad thing.

I was thinking of getting the paid version of Malwarebytes but I read that the current paid version of Malwarebytes disables Microsoft Defender by default, telling Windows it is a complete antivirus. So I did not get it and am just using MS Defender.

Jestertheclown · Feb 20, 2023

skyglider said:
Ho72 said:

Most people seem to feel that Defender is good enough but, as someone who uses the paid version of Malwarebytes, I can tell you that its real time protection catches nasties that Defender does not. An extra layer of protection is not a bad thing.

Click to expand...

I was thinking of getting the paid version of Malwarebytes but I read that the current paid version of Malwarebytes disables Microsoft Defender by default,

That's correct.

You have to tell Malwarebytes to allow Defender to run alongside it, which it will happily do, in the background.

It's a simple matter of pressing a button but I can't remember which one!

You'll find it easily on Google.

skyglider said:
telling Windows it is a complete antivirus. So I did not get it and am just using MS Defender.

"It's good to be . . . . . . . . . Me!"

Do I need additional antivirus protection for Windows 11?

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