the Windows operating system contains comprehensive anti virus and anti-malware functionality in Microsoft Defender Antiirus this is integrated into the operating system and installed and turned on by default you'll find all of the information about Windows Defender Antiirus under the Windows Security app specifically the section for virus and threat protection depending on the version of Windows you're using you could see different names for this application it might be called Defender Antiirus Windows Defender or the name that's used currently Microsoft Defender Anti Virus if you're looking for the Windows Security app you can go to the search option within Windows 11 type security and it should be the option right at the top called Windows Security app when this starts you'll see a number of different features including account protection firewall and network protection app and browser control and others but for our purposes in this video we're going to talk about the virus and threat protection option at the upper left if we click that we'll get more details on Windows Defender Antiirus for the vast majority of your work inside of Windows you will want to leave this function enabled you never want to turn off your anti virus or anti-malware capability because it is very easy for one of those malware apps to sneak into your system without you knowing it this is something you might need to turn off if you're simply doing some temporary troubleshooting and you want to be sure that the problem you're having is not associated with Defender Antiirus the default configuration for Defender Antivirus is to run with realtime protection this means that it will monitor and scan for all file transfers that are occurring in and out of your operating system and it will automatically identify any malicious software that may be contained within those documents if for some reason you need to turn off this real-time protection you'll find this under the Windows security app under the virus and threat protection settings if you go to the manage settings section you can enable and disable real time protection we're back on my Windows machine and under virus and threat protection I'm going to scroll down past the current threats and move down under virus and threat protection settings there's an option here for manage settings and we'll click on that we can enable and disable real-time protection cloud delivered protection automatic sample submission tamper protection control folder access and define any exclusions if you'd like to disable this function let's scroll all the way back to the top where it says real time protection you can see it is set on by default we will click that option and Windows will give us a user account control window telling us that it's about to make a major change to the operating system and it asks do you want to allow this app to make changes to your device this would be the Windows security app from Microsoft Windows and we would like to yes make changes and you can see that has now turned off real time protection this also puts a notice on this page that says real time protection is off leaving your device vulnerable just so you're aware of the concerns associated with disabling that functionality the process for reenabling real-time protection is the same process we go to the toggle that says off we click it it asks if we would like to make changes to our device we would and now real time protection is back on many anti virus applications rely on a set of signatures to be able to identify this malicious software so in order to catch the latest version of viruses and malware we need the latest version of definitions normally these definitions are downloaded automatically but there may be times when you would like to force a check of those definitions to confirm that you really are running the latest version you would find this option in Defender Antivirus under the threat and protection updates section and there is an option to check for updates on that next page you'll find a button that will allow you to check for updates you can also manage the automatic update process from that screen as well back on our Windows configuration we are in our Windows security app under virus and threat protection i'm going to scroll down just a bit to where it says virus and threat protection updates and I'm going to click the option for protection updates from this window it tells us about the latest updates that have been installed the security intelligence version number when that version was created and when the last update was made if we click check for updates it will go out and check for the latest version of those updates if there have been new definitions it will download those definitions and install them into your currently running version now that our updates are successful you can see there is a new version of the signatures that was installed and updated on this Windows 11 device