For home users, here’s a secret: you don’t need to buy antivirus software for Windows laptops at home.
Information Security Leader | Director | Zero Trust, IR, GRC & Email Compromise Response | AI Platform Governance & Security | GSE #236 (1 of ~300 worldwide) · CISSP
For home users, here’s a secret: you don’t need to buy antivirus software for Windows laptops at home.
I’ve spent years doing cybersecurity investigations. Friends and family ask me what AV to buy. My answer is always the same: nothing.
Here’s the free setup that beats almost everything you’d pay for on a home Windows laptop:
1. Use Windows Defender. It’s built in. It’s free. It scores as well as or better than paid competitors in independent lab testing. Stop letting a another third party app burn your CPU and sell your telemetry.
2. Set your DNS to 1.1.1.3. Cloudflare’s malware blocking resolver. It kills known bad domains before your browser even loads them. Takes two minutes. Never touch it again.
3. Block notification permissions in Chrome or Edge. This is the quiet killer. Fake “your PC is infected” alerts and scareware pop-ups almost always come through browser notifications people forgot they enabled. Turn it off entirely.
4. Set up MFA on your email and bank accounts. Passkeys via Windows Hello preferred. This stops the attacks that don’t care what antivirus you’re running.
That’s the whole stack. No subscription. No renewal spam. No fake scan results trying to scare you into paying $80.
The paid AV industry runs on marketing and auto-renewal, not on catching what Defender misses.
Skip it. Spend the money on backups instead.
What do you recommend to your friends and family?