With a simple tweet today, Jeff Snover, the Distinguished Engineer and Lead Architect, the grandfather of PowerShell, informed us that Microsoft will be shipping Windows Defender by default with Server2010. The feature is already available in the current Server Technical Preview released with the Windows Client last Wednesday.

With this move Microsoft is providing basic security to the small business and home-server community that are hard-pressed to subscribe to the exorbitant amount needed to put on Servers Antivirus services provided by renowned AV companies. This is a welcomed move, as Servers are now secured by default. Yours truly is running Server-Essentials 2012R2 at home here, I’ve had to install and early version of MS Security Essentials on it, a version that precede the time that MS barred MSSE on Servers.

So now you know. Servers will be live with AV built-in, and for Enterprises with complex security requirements, you can still run your Enterprise AV solutions on them which will disable the built-in AV like for Windows Clients.

Source: TechNet