AV-Comparatives Awards 2025 for Microsoft

Microsoft products enjoyed a quite successful year in AV-Comparatives’ tests of consumer and enterprise security products, and were rewarded with numerous awards. These covered a variety of protection scenarios, system performance, and false positives, as well as a number of different platforms.

Microsoft Defender Antivirus delivers all the core features of a security program through a clean, intuitive interface. It is simple to use and comes pre-installed with Windows for immediate protection.

Microsoft Defender Antivirus is pre-installed on Windows 10/11 systems. In business environments, it can be managed e.g. with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint’s P1 plan. It combines machine learning models trained on cloud-scale data and behaviour-based detection to protect in real-time against malware and malicious activity.

AV-Comparatives’ tests are very carefully designed and executed to thoroughly and realistically simulate scenarios that face users in real life. Consequently, a certification by AV-Comparatives is a guarantee of an effective and reliable product. An “Approved Product” award means that the software has been rigorously checked to ensure that it will perform its intended task competently. It is an industry-recognised standard of quality.

AV-Comparatives’ tests have multiple aspects, to represent the different requirements of IT security solutions. Further awards highlight the effectiveness of individual programs in different protection scenarios, low false positives, and low impact on system performance. Users can thus see which programs score highly in the categories that matter most to them.

AV-Comparatives is an independent testing lab based in Innsbruck, Austria, that tests IT security products to see if they live up to their promises. AV-Comparatives is ISO 9001:2015 certified, having received a certificate from TÜV Austria for the scope “Independent Tests of Anti-Virus Software”. AV-Comparatives is also the first av-test organisation to be certified by European Expert Group for IT-Security (EICAR) as an EICAR Trusted IT-Security Testing Lab.

AV-Comparatives Awards for Microsoft

Microsoft achieved great success in AV-Comparatives’ tests of consumer and enterprise software. In the Enterprise Tests, it received the Approved Business Security Product Award for both the first and second runs of the Enterprise Main Test Series. Additionally Microsoft received an Approved Anti-Tampering Award.

For the Consumer Main Test Series, Microsoft was given an Approved Security Product Award. It reached the highest Advanced+ level in three tests and the Advanced level in a further two test.

These awards show the excellent level reached by Microsoft enterprise and consumer products in 2025.