Is Windows Defender Good Enough for windows 10 as an antivirus

Windows 10 won’t hassle you to install an antivirus like Windows 7 did. Since Windows 8, Windows now includes a built-in antivirus called Windows Defender (which used to be available separately as Microsoft Security Essentials). But is it really the best for protecting your PC–or even just good enough?

A One-Two Punch: Antivirus and Anti-Malware
Here’s the short version: antivirus itself is no longer adequate security on its own. We recommend you use a good antivirus program and a good anti-malware program. Together, they will protect you from most of the biggest threats on the internet today: viruses, spyware, ransomware and even potentially unwanted programs (PUPs)—among many others.
So which ones should you use? Let’s start with the first part of that combo: antivirus.

Is Windows Defender Good Enough?
When you install Windows 10, you’ll have an antivirus program already running. Windows Defender comes built-in to Windows 10, and automatically scans programs you open, downloads new definitions from Windows Update, and provides an interface you can use for in-depth scans.
But how good is it? Well, truth be told, Microsoft’s antivirus is a bit behind the others when it comes to comparative antivirus software tests. We’ve sounded the alarm on this before, and we were particularly worried because we had previously liked Microsoft’s antivirus product so much.
Windows Defender has a lot of advantages. It’s built-in, won’t harass you with pop-ups and requests for money, and is lighter than some competing antivirus solutions. It won’t attempt to harvest your browsing data and make money from it, as some free antivirus programs have started doing in an attempt to make a profit.
Overall, Windows Defender doesn’t provide bad protection, assuming you keep Windows up-to-date, use an up-to-date browser, and avoid potentially dangerous plug-ins like Java. In short: the standard computer security practices you should be following go a long way, and Windows Defender combines that with a baseline of protection.
Windows Defender receives fairly low “scores” in antivirus rankings–just 3.5 out of 6 from AV-TEST and the vague but not-very-complimentary “tested” from AV-Comparatives. However, when it comes to actual statistics, AV-TEST found that it still caught 99 percent of the “widespread and prevalent malware” in October 2015, along with 95 percent of the zero-day attacks. AV-Comparatives real-world protection tests found that it caught 94.5% of threats. That’s decent, although still lower than almost every other option (and when you consider AV-Comparatives’ sample size of 1517 threats, it meant that 89 threats still got through).
BitDefender and Kaspersky, on the other hand, managed to protect against 100 percent of AV-TEST’s zero day threats, and 99.9% percent of both AV-TEST and AV-Comparatives’ real world tests.
In the past, Microsoft has alleged that it focuses on malware that’s actually prevalent in the real world while the tests aren’t representative and other antivirus vendors tune their products to do well in tests. Microsoft employees don’t generally comment on test results anymore, however.
Windows 10 also includes various other protections introduced in Windows 8, like the SmartScreen filter that should prevent you from downloading and running malware, whatever antivirus you use. Chrome and Firefox also include Google’s Safe Browsing, which blocks many malware downloads.