When the installation is complete, you can click Finish. There really aren’t any, other than choosing the installation directory.

If you’re like me, you will almost always click Custom, just because you want to see what the options are. Choose between a complete install and a custom one. The option in the middle allows you to update your spyware signatures without joining SpyNet. If you want to participate in SpyNet, select the top option. If you don’t want to send any data, the more conservative option is to select Ask me later.

Participating in this will mean that some nonuser-specific data will be sent back to Microsoft. SpyNet is a system whereby the actions users take collectively form a profile of a given program to help determine whether it is malicious. Read moreĪ brief description is provided next to each choice. We will discuss how you can force an update later in this chapter. If for some reason the database does not update itself past that time period, you should force and update.

In general, you should not let the database get more than 14 days old.

However, this is not a hard and fast schedule, and if new updates are available in less than a day, Windows Defender will update itself more often (such as when there is a new piece of prevalent malware released in the wild and Microsoft wants you to get updates faster and not have to wait an entire day). The signatures provide information about the spyware images themselves and also the types of changes the spyware makes to an infected system.ĭefinition updates are released on a regular basis and are typically updated once per day. These signatures provide information about current spyware and other forms of malware. Windows Defender is a signature-based antimalware system, and these signatures provide the definitions that Windows Defender uses to identify malware on a Windows system. Debra Littlejohn Shinder, in Windows Server 2012 Security from End to Edge and Beyond, 2013 Windows Defender Definitions

Windows defender run scan