Do I need more than one antimalware tool?
Hi, everyone. Leo Notenboom here for
Askleo.com Let's dive right into the question.
With regards to Firewall's antivirus programs and antispyware programs,
can I have more than one of each of these programs installed on my computer?
For example, I run zone alarm.
Does that mean I should turn off Windows Firewall?
Honestly, that's a very old question,
and I'm running it today because the answer has changed.
The answer is very different than what it once was.
Today, the answer is very simple.
If you're running Windows 10 or Windows
11, no, you really don't need another antimalware tool.
Windows 10 and Windows 11 include, by default, Windows Security,
which is a perfectly fine anti-spyware tool, antivirus tool.
It's a firewall. There's all sorts of good stuff in there.
It's enabled by default.
In general, you really don't need to do a thing.
Now, once upon a time in previous
versions, yes, you used to have multiple different programs.
You needed an antivirus program to look for viruses arriving on your machine.
You need an anti-spyware program to look
for behavior that indicated your data was being exposed.
You needed a firewall to prevent or undo access to your machine.
All of those today are bundled into Windows already.
You don't really need to add anything more.
Now, there are cases where
an additional scan or an additional tool might be useful.
That is, if you are concerned or if you have evidence that the Microsoft security
didn't catch something, in other words, with Microsoft security turned on,
you suspect that there may still be a problem.
In that case, yes, get a good third-party
program and run additional scans with that program.
Now, I have to caution you here because
the behavior of Microsoft security has also changed.
What's important to understand here is
that it is a problem if two different anti-malware tools are
running their real-time scans at the same time.
They can come into conflict and they can actually flag each other as being
malicious, or worse, they can be prevented from actually
doing their job, again, if there's more than one.
Microsoft security knows this, and if it sees you install a different
third-party anti-malware solution, it steps aside.
It stops doing whatever it was doing,
assuming that you want that third-party software to do the job instead.
So be careful.
In general, I recommend using third-party software these days only to run
an additional scan, not as a permanent replacement for Windows security.
What that implies today is that you need
to either install your third party, run your scan,
and then make sure to turn it off so that Windows security can be turned back on.
A quicker, perhaps more reliable way to do that is to install your third party
software, run that additional scan, and then uninstall the third-party software.
Again, Windows security will
step aside when it sees something being installed, but it will step back up when
it sees something being uninstalled, when it thinks that you would be left
unprotected, it will step in and start protecting you once again.
But again, this is something that honestly, I find I rarely, if ever,
need, and I really don't recommend it very often these days.
Windows security, Microsoft security is actually pretty good
and is usually all that most Windows 10 and Windows 11 users honestly ever need.
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I'm Leo Notenboom, and this is Askleo.com
Thanks for watching.