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Should I use third party firewall or antivirus on Windows (or elsewhere)? Which one?
It's seems to have been common sense for a while now that Windows has good-enough security software that you don't need 3rd party tools but is it actually the case now? Is there anything to lose or gain from trusting 3rd party with this stuff?
Windows is fairly decent now with their built-in antivirus, if you want to take it a step farther then it doesn't hurt to run Malwarebytes from time to time, no need to pay for anything extra on there for manual deep scans.
For the most part, you'll likely be fine just with Defender running.
Yeah, I've learned that Defender and the awareness to avoid downloading sketchy shit or going to unsecured websites is more than enough to keep a healthy and virus-free computer. The performance hit from 3rd party security software, and their inherently intrusive nature with popups and alerts, even when everything is normal, is too aggravating to stand for me personally. I'd say they're a good fit for my parents who may not know any better when it comes to safe browsing behaviors and software security in general, and they don't care about performance hits.
Especially all those poor users who were duped into buying McAfee or Avast.
I remember around 20 years ago Avast was the shit. Effective, unobtrusive, and the full version free for personal users (supported off enterprise subscriptions). Cue enshittification.
I'd say better than fairly decent, it's among the better alternatives available.
No. Stick to common sense + downloading stuff from winget, which as I understand it has a lower chance of having outright malware slip into it (compared to search engine results which have been gamed in the past). Also, don't click on weird files and consider using security features such as smart app control or windows sandbox.
Defender is one of the few things they've done right, it's all you really need. The main advantage is that since everyone is using it, Defender has phenomenal reach and reporting telemetry which is a massive advantage for detecting and patching against fresh malware threats. The Windows firewall is locked down fairly well by default, it does not expose services unnecessarily anymore. Microsoft didn't really have a choice here, Windows is still the number one malware target and it's been the number one target for more than three decades. They had to get good.
If you want something more advanced, I'd start by evaluating Sophos. It's much bigger in the UK than in the states but imo it's better than other pay-for alternatives, particularly when it comes to managing the security of your network and dozens or thousands of machines at once. Their admin console and group policy integration make it easy to do things like, for example, banning or whitelisting specific versions of specific browser addons for web browsers across your entire organization.
Honestly though, unless you're managing a network, you won't need that stuff. For your typical home Windows user, the built in systems are good enough.
NO! Windows Defender is more than enough as long as you're not completely braindead.
Windows security is decent enough in my opinion.
I always scan every executable on https://www.virustotal.com/ to be extra sure though.
As an extra measure I have my home network setup in such a way that my own PC / laptop are fully separated from all other devices. Untrusted IoT devices have their own WiFi network with AP isolation so they can only access the internet.
Yeah, anything potentially sketchy that I intend to download/run I check on virustotal first too, just as an added precaution. But Windows Sandbox and Wireshark are handy from time to time too, when I suspect something fishy is going on.
Defender is as good as anything else these days, and everything is tightly integrated. If you wanted to manage traffic across your network I'd say run a firewall, but if it's per-computer I wouldn't stress it. Windows Firewall is perfectly useful.
Honestly, the point where you need a firewall is in front of your wireless router, not on your Windows laptop or PC. Most households have a great deal of vulnerable junk connected these days, from unpatched cellphones to smart thermostats, stoves, and washing machines with perpetually wide open old firmware.
Your consumer Windows system actually has a moderately protective firewall right out of the box, whereas none of those other devices have anything.
If you have any reason to suspect that you're personally targeted for surveillance or malicious activity, as opposed to a normal user, it's a whole different ballgame. You need to start looking at partitioning sensitive activities to more secure environments - disposable Tails VMs for banking, etc.