Is Malwarebytes Premium + Windows Defender necessary?

[domon3]

Not that Malwarebytes doesn't do anything- it's caught things a lot more often than Windows Defender has, but 2 things are making me reconsider:

1) Internet browsing speed is noticeably slower while both run. I know this comes with the added security but recently, Defender was named the best A/V program (as of Aug 2019).

2) While researching this question I found a bunch of posts on the Microsoft support forums (circa 2018) saying that additional a/v software disables Windows Defender. 

 

So hopefully, I can get some unbiased answers here. I'm a smart guy- I don't browse sketch sites or download dumb *****. But Malwarebytes always catches things Defender doesn't. Recently it was some adware/fusion thing tied to a POT player update. Whether that was due to #2 above, or if Malwarebytes is better- I don't know.

 

Thanks.

 

[exile360]

Greetings,

It's up to you whether you run both, and the two together are definitely a good combination (Malwarebytes is deliberately engineered not to interfere with other security software, especially general antivirus applications like Windows Defender); that said, if you would prefer to use only one then you can disable Windows Defender and use Malwarebytes alone if you wish.  You could of course use Defender on its own and disable Malwarebytes, but I honestly wouldn't advise that knowing how much the various layers of defense in Malwarebytes improve the security of a system and I truly believe you'd be better off keeping Malwarebytes either way.  I've personally been dealing with viruses and malware for around 15 years, and in all that time through extensive personal use and testing I've never come across a single solution that I absolutely will not do without besides Malwarebytes.  I've used all the top AVs and tons of other anti-malware applications and utilities, but Malwarebytes, especially the latest version Malwarebytes 3 with all of the new protection layers it has added has proven itself to be one of the most robust and effective solutions available, at least in my opinion.

With all of that said, you probably can make some tweaks to improve system performance, including creating mutual exclusions between Malwarebytes and Windows Defender.  You should exclude Malwarebytes Program Files folder and the Malwarebytes folder under C:\ProgramData from Windows Defender, and you should exclude Windows Defenders' folder(s) under C:\Program Files (and I believe also C:\Program Files (x86)) from Malwarebytes.

Additionally, while it is an excellent layer of defense should your system actually become infected with ransomware, the Ransomware Protection component of Malwarebytes is far more of a reactive solution than a proactive one as it monitors all processes and threads in memory for ransomware behavior to prevent your data from being encrypted and ransomed by ransomware should your system become infected by it, however I am very confident that it is generally unnecessary as the other more proactive protection layers in Malwarebytes should be sufficient to prevent any ransomware from actually getting into your system in the first place, especially the excellent Exploit Protection component which guards against known and unknown exploits which are the most common means of infecting systems with ransomware, so if you were to disable the Ransomware Protection component, which should do a great deal to improve overall system performance, you should still be very secure against infections.  If you decide to do this, I'd also advise changing the setting in Malwarebytes to disable notifications about real-time protection being disabled so that you aren't constantly notified about having Ransomware Protection turned off.

I hope this helps, and if there is anything else we might assist you with please let us know.

Thanks

[domon3]

Excellent, this was exactly what I was looking for. Thank you so much.

 

Edited August 12, 2019 by AdvancedSetup
removed unneeded quotes

[exile360]

You're welcome, I'm glad I could help