Imagine my surprise the other day when Microsoft Defender on mac popped up when I went to a new website and said “You have been protected from an exploit.” I was gobsmacked. You can see in the photo what the details of this threat looked like. It only said it was a web exploit and wouldn’t name it.
First I was surprised because I haven’t had mac malware for a very long time. Mostly however I was surprised because a free Microsoft program protected me when I spent hundreds/thousands of dollars of my own money on commercial software that never protected me. Mac Defender for mac is currently free. I use it on both my mac/pc for protection.
Why am I sharing this? I think it is remarkable that a free program is doing better than a paid program. I am no Microsoft cheerleader but I have to be honest and state that compared to Google and AWS they are looking pretty good. I don’t see either of those two giants giving out free malware protection for OS that don’t control. In fact, I would say at this point MS has gone from the evil empire to the lesser of 3 evil empires.
Is there a downside to using Defender? Not so far. Let me think for a minute to find one. The UI isn’t the most modern. Microsoft always does seem to have a weakness with UI. I do like the fact however that it shows the status of other Microsoft Defender products I am using/signed into. That is a nice touch. For a family, this would be a big help.
I have used lots of mac malware protection but so far Microsoft Defender seems to be the best of the bunch. Who would have thought that MS could come from behind to be a leader? Wouldn’t it be funny if MS’s future profits aren’t in windows but in supporting legacy and niche operating systems? Instead of the network being the computer, the software is the computer.