Is Microsoft now considering MBAM as an anti-virus app?

My reason for raising this question is that, as of late, Windows Defender Security Center in Virus & threat protection subcategory is showing MBAM as an antivirus app. That has caused the Real-time protection button to be greyed out and as a consequence, I cannot toggle the "Controlled Folder Access" button to On. As we all know, in order for the latter to be "On", Real-time protection button has to be On first. Kind of a conundrum!

At one point, I was not even receiving Definition Updates for Windows Defender Security for at least a week. That's when I realized the problem. To be able to start receiving those updates, I had to toggle "Periodic Scanning" to on. Weirdly enough, as of this writing it has gone back to "off". I didn't do it. Does anybody have an idea of what's going on. Is MBAM now an anti-virus app?. I don't have any other anti-virus app on my system except for Windows Defender.

cereberus said:

Version 3 of MBAM is a full fledged AV package, not just malware and meets MS requirements for 3rd party protection instead of Defender. This only applies if it is used in online mode which is not free (apart from the initial 14 day trial).

If you do not buy a licence after 14 days, MBAM reverts to free offline use only, and can no longer be used instead of Defender - Defender should reactivate automatically.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer to my post. My MBAM is a paid version app. According to what you are saying, I don't have to worry about the changes that I am seeing with regard to Windows defender behaviour. I never knew that MBAM could behave as a fully-fledged A-V. I have certainly missed out something in the cyber security news.

One last question though: Can MBAM give me the same protection for my folder access as WD?

Open MB and set Action Center option to NEVER.

Phone Man said:

Open MB and set Action Center option to NEVER.

I have just changed the settings in MBAM as per your suggestion. I really like it. Now I have to restart my PC and see what happens. I will definitely post back. Thanks a lot mate!

Phone Man said:

Open MB and set Action Center option to NEVER.

After restarting my PC, The real-time protection button is still greyed out with the header: "This setting is managed by your administrator". I know that has to do with gpedit.msc . I am going to try to find out if I can reconfigure Group Policy editor in order to be able to toggle this thing on. Any other suggestions..!

Wiley Coyote said:

WD and MBAM (paid version) peacefully co-exist here with all the options on except for the "Never register … in the … Action Center.

Good luck there.

Which means I should leave it as is, unless I completely uninstall MBAM, which I doubt I'll do. I just found this tutorial in tenforums (Option six): Turn On or Off Windows Defender Real-time Protection in Windows 10, but I am not sure that will make a difference. MS will certainly put things back the way it was before as long as I am still running MBAM.

This is a first for me. I never knew that MBAM has changed from being an anti-malware app to an anti-virus type. The answer lies with @cereberus' post (#2) above.

cereberus said:

It has not really changed from one type to another but become more all inclusive.

Frankly, I cannot see the benefit if it - Defender + good habits are fine. Mo matter how many times I use MBAM offline, it has never found anything not already picked up by Defender.

I really think people think MBAM is bette based on historic views when Defender was poor but now I think they live largely on their legend.

Yeah, but Microsoft is calling it (MBAM) an anti-virus program now according to the screenshot below. Is this just semantics?



In any case, I really appreciate your intervention in this thread. Thanks again! I will leave things the way they are for now and mark this thread as solved.