Responding to Kaspersky’s accusations that antivirus programs are being mistreated on Windows, Microsoft acknowledges that their OS does disable third-party AV – but it is strictly for compatibility, not competitive, reasons. Based on what Windows and Devices’ director of security had to say, it seems that the fault lies with AV makers if their solutions get flagged: when third-party code expires or becomes outdated, Redmond’s security software will kick in.



“Microsoft’s application compatibility teams found that roughly 95 per cent of Windows 10 PCs had an antivirus application installed that was already compatible with Windows 10 Creators Update,” said Rob Lefferts, director of security in the Windows and Devices group. “For the small number of applications that still needed updating, we built a feature just for AV apps that would prompt the customer to install a new version of their AV app right after the update completed. To do this, we first temporarily disabled some parts of the AV software when the update began.”

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Source: [H]ardOCP – Microsoft Admits to Disabling Third-Party Antivirus Code