Because of the Ukraine war and the associated risk of cyber attacks in Germany, the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) is now warning against the use of virus protection software from the Russian manufacturer Kaspersky.
If you have Kaspersky software installed, you should according to BSI replace with alternative products. Fortunately, Microsoft has already integrated a protection program with Defender. But is that enough?
Windows Defender not the best choice
The virus scanner Defender built into Windows provides passable protection, but there is a better way. For example with one of the many free protection programs that get to work reliably. This is the result of Stiftung Warentest in a comparison of 20 paid and free virus scanners (“test” issue 3/22).
The best free virus scanner in the test was called Kaspersky Security Cloud Free. It ended up in third place overall and, with an overall grade of 1.6, is only one tenth worse than the test winner from the same company, which is subject to a fee and costs 40 euros a year. But there are alternatives.
Virus scanners that you should use instead of Kaspersky
The three next-placed free solutions Avast Free Antivirus, AVG Antivirus Free and Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition (no longer available) also scored “good” (overall grade 2.0) in the test. Although Windows Defender is the worst protection program in comparison, it is still satisfactory (overall rating 3.1).
Also interesting: Do virus scanners slow down the laptop?
Kaspersky defends itself
Kaspersky, meanwhile, stressed in a statement that as a private company it had “no ties to the Russian or any other government”. The infrastructure for data processing has been relocated to Switzerland: “We assure our partners and customers of the quality and integrity of our products and will work with the BSI to clarify the decision and to address the concerns of the BSI or other regulatory authorities.”