In a previous post, in the spirit of our commitment to delivering industry-leading protection, customer choice, and transparency on the quality of our solutions, we shared insights and context into the results of AV-TEST’s January-February 2018 test cycle. We released a transparency report to help our customers and the broader security community to stay informed and understand independent test results better.

In the continued spirit of these principles, we’d like to share Windows Defender AV’s scores in the March-April 2018 test. In this new iteration of the transparency report, we continue to investigate the relationship of independent test results and the real-world protection of antivirus solutions. We hope that you find the report insightful.

Below is a summary of the transparency report:

Protection : Windows Defender AV achieved an overall Protection score of 5.5/6.0, missing 2 out of 5,680 malware samples (0.035% miss rate). With the latest results, Windows Defender AV has achieved 100% on 9 of the 12 most recent tests (combined “Real World” and “Prevalent malware”). Usability (false positives) : Windows Defender AV maintained its previous score of 5.5/6.0. Based on telemetry, most samples that Windows Defender AV incorrectly classified as malware (false positive) had very low prevalence and are not commonly used in business context. This means that it is unlikely for these false positives to affect enterprise customers. Performance : Windows Defender AV maintained its previous score of 5.5/6.0 and continued to outperform the industry in most areas. These results reflect the investments we made in optimizing Windows Defender AV performance for high-frequency actions.

The report aims to help customers evaluate the extent to which test results are reflective of the quality of protection in the real world. At the same time, insights from the report continue to drive further improvements in the intelligent security services that Microsoft provides for customers.

Windows Defender AV and the rest of the built-in security technologies in Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (Windows Defender ATP) work together to create a unified endpoint security platform. In real customer environments, this unified security platform provides intelligent protection, detection, investigation, and response capabilities that are not currently reflected in independent tests. We tested the two malware samples that Windows Defender AV missed in the March-April 2018 test and proved that for both missed samples, at least three other components of Windows Defender ATP would detect or block the malware in a true attack scenario. You can find these details and more in the transparency report.

The Windows Defender ATP security platform incorporates attack surface reduction, next-generation protection, endpoint detection and response, and advanced hunting capabilities. To see these capabilities for yourself, sign up for a 90-day trial of Windows Defender ATP, or enable Preview features on existing tenants.

Zaid Arafeh

Senior Program Manager, Windows Defender Research team

Related blog posts:

Why Windows Defender Antivirus is the most deployed in the enterprise

Adding transparency and context into industry AV test results

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