If you're comfortable with all this - and in our experience, Edge is lighter and faster than Chrome - then Microsoft Defender Antivirus and the related protections built into Windows 10 and 11 should absolutely be good enough to protect you from malware and give you a few useful extra security features as well.īut if you'd rather use Chrome or Firefox, Slack or Zoom, Google Workspace or LibreOffice instead of the corresponding Microsoft products, then it would be best to get one of the best Windows 10 (and 11) antivirus programs. You can also put Microsoft Family Safety apps (opens in new tab) on your children’s Android and iOS devices but this requires a paid subscription to Microsoft Office 365. Likewise, for the parental controls to work properly, your kids have to use Edge and no other browser on Windows. Microsoft does have browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox but they’re limited to machines running the Pro, Enterprise or Education versions of Windows 10 and Windows 11. To be fair though, the protection offered by Chrome and Firefox is pretty good on its own.

As a result, if your Chrome or Firefox browser is used to visit a malicious website, you’ll have to rely on the browser’s own protection, not Microsoft’s.

Is windows defender good enough