It quickly became a popular choice among users who wanted a basic antivirus program that wouldn’t cost them a dime. Its predecessor, Microsoft Security Essentials, was released back in 2009 as a free antivirus program for Windows XP, Vista, and 7. No joke.Windows Defender has come a long way since its inception. So, if you’re a Microsoft 365 subscriber and you want something to keep an eye on your Mac, you could do worse than Microsoft Defender. Even when it was doing a full scan, it failed to break into the top five memory users. For comparison, top-of-the-list Dropbox is using 447MB. I’ve just checked the Mac Activity Monitor and it’s halfway down the list, nibbling on 60MB of RAM. It sits in the background and doesn’t consume significant resources. Oddly, you have to enter your macOS password to find out exactly what the malware is, but I think that’s a macOS restriction more than a Microsoft one.ĭefender is pretty lightweight, too. I ran a full scan on my MacBook Pro yesterday, and after 20 minutes of probing it found two Trojans (both in my email app) and offered to put them both in quarantine.

If macOS’s own security tools don’t intervene first. But if you clicked on an attachment that was trying to install something nasty, Defender promises to get in the way. Defender doesn’t throw itself in front of the truck, begging you not to open or reply to the mail. There’s no active email scanning, for example, and I get plenty of malicious emails: fake delivery scams, offers from Saudi princes, spoof Amazon emails. It’s not a marketing prank, although you suspect there was a degree of sniggering in the Microsoft press office when this was released.ĭoes Microsoft Defender do its job? Well, it’s not the most proactive of security suites. Parents, for example, can open the Defender app on their phone and get a reassuring reminder that all of the family’s other computing devices are protected.

Microsoft is positioning Defender as a security dashboard for all of your devices. It’s part of the company’s all-encompassing Microsoft 365 package, which includes the Office products and now Defender for PC, Mac, Android and even iOS. So now Microsoft Defender has landed on the Mac. Defender for Mac scans for viruses, but not a lot else Barry Collins

Is microsoft defender good enough