Is there any reason for a Windows user to use anything other than Microsoft Security Essentials (or Defender as it's been called since Windows 8)? It's free and everything I've seen and read indicates it works just as well if not better than commercial antivirus suites.
I have not found a good reason to use anything else. There are things that MSE will not catch, and I was derided by our "computer" company for using MSE instead of a Symantec product that he would have charged us for, but I then showed him an online virus scanner that showed that the particular piece of malware (ransom wear) that we picked up was not detected by either Symantec or MSE. He then conceded "yeah, well I guess any piece of software can't catch EVERYthing."
I have found that MSE is very lightweight and catches almost everything. I have not found a reason to use anything else.
It doesn't satisfy my auditors. Who can't seem to explain why ("it's not on the list of boxes I can tick"), other than to direct us to the big four of McAfee/Sophos/Kaspersky/Symantec.
I'm guessing that's due a combination of tradition (Security Essentials hasn't been around as long as the rest) and possibly having business connections with those antivirus companies.
No other reason than that it systematically sucks at stopping malware campaigns compared to pretty much everyone else on independent third party comparisons such as https://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/home-windows/
