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Comment by duaneb | Hacker News Reader

The people making decisions about what security products to buy can be very, very far removed from people who understand security. Windows defender, bless it, has changed it to a security built on ignorance.

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Can you expand on your Windows Defender statement? I've heard nothing but good things from techs about it. I know it's not useful against zero days because it is signature based, but uses less system resources as a result.

My "bless it" was serious, not sarcastic. Windows defender is an excellent product. It obsoleted much of the industry.

I count myself as reasonably informed about security threats, I've been recommending Defender / Security Essentials to people instead of AVG/Avast/Comodo/Symantec for home users.

Dismissive, brief statements like yours don't really help - they don't give me enough information to go research whether I should be recommending something else (including offering financial support to pay for subscriptions)

I know that Defender doesn't have the world's best detection rate but isn't it better than an expired copy of McAffee?

Should I be recommending EMET? Virtual Machines? Qubes OS?

I said can be, I did not intend to whitewash every Microsoft installation.

Here's a better question: how do you qualify a "good" anti-virus engine?

As far as I know, even the best antivirus products are only like 50% effective.

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