Windows Defender

Will I continue to receive Windows Defender updates on my W10 operating system after the October 2025 end of service date?

Microsoft says here:

"Microsoft will also continue to provide Security Intelligence Updates for Microsoft Defender Antivirus through at least October 2028. "

I am quoting from the official Windows Experience Blog:

"Starting Oct. 14, 2025, Windows 10 will no longer receive security updates."

I'll let our friends at Microsoft make up their minds.

Windows 10 security updates and Security Intelligence Updates for Microsoft Defender Antivirus have nothing to do with each other.

I'm sorry, you will not continue to receive Windows Defender updates.

I think the OP's question got already answered.

Chien and Smeed,

The simple fact that Microsoft plans to provide extended support updates for both business and education systems for 3 years after the lifecycle end date of October 2025 for Windows 10, obviously requires that they also provide the security Intelligence updates to supported Windows 10 versions of Microsoft Defender antivirus as well.

That seems relatively obvious based on logic to me, without any specific statement being required that those particular updates will continue at least until Windows 10 itself no longer has any sort of critical update support (and likely, unofficially, beyond).

They are in truth, inexorably linked, since otherwise it might require Microsoft to provide some other form of security app entirely, which I'm certain they'd rather not have to do with that same basic application operating on Windows 11 as well.

In truth, there's actually very little difference between Windows 10 or 11 anyway, since 11 is really just 10 with some improved requirements like support for Windows Hello Face/Fingerprint/PIN, the Device Security portions of Defender including Secure Boot, among others, which provide the base for the virtualization capabilities for much of the added security abilities 11 contains.

So, continuing to support either the Security Intelligence updates or for that matter the related Security application or most of the Windows critical updates required for Windows 10 is really much easier for Microsoft than for most similar upgrades in the past, except maybe for the Windows Vista and 7 updates that, similarly, were typically packaged together for things like Security Intelligence, since the base over which each was built were nearly identical and only portions of the interfaces for each like the improved Wi-Fi settings controls and other core operating system application support were actually different.

Only those of us who both did much of the beta testing for each of these operating systems, and sometimes through our enhanced internal access at the time as MVP's, were both provided visibility into how similar these were and understood that the versioning was actually done primarily to get the public to believe these were really something truly different. The real difference with Windows 11 is that unlike Windows 10, it requires the support provided by the later 7th-generation Intel and similar processors of hardware-supported virtualization features to ensure the stability and performance of these functions under all forms of application support.

It's almost funny to me how few still seem to recognize these differences and similarities, let alone why they truly matter and what they mean to the continued support of the previous version(s) by Microsoft.

Rob