Of course OS updates (along side browser updates) are the best defense against malware, and are kiiiind of important to have!
Speaking of updates, Dolphin's latest dev builds will not even work on Windows 7 without updates! To run on Windows 7, Dolphin needs SP1, VS2015 runtimes (hence the SP1 requirement), and the D3D11.1 update (which needs lots of smaller side updates to work). Of course, even with that update, you aren't getting all of D3D11.1's features due to its old Windows Display Driver Model. So there are features in Dolphin you are missing out on even if Windows 7 is fully up to date!
Speaking of updates, Dolphin's latest dev builds will not even work on Windows 7 without updates! To run on Windows 7, Dolphin needs SP1, VS2015 runtimes (hence the SP1 requirement), and the D3D11.1 update (which needs lots of smaller side updates to work). Of course, even with that update, you aren't getting all of D3D11.1's features due to its old Windows Display Driver Model. So there are features in Dolphin you are missing out on even if Windows 7 is fully up to date!
AMD Threadripper Pro 5975WX PBO+200 | Asrock WRX80 Creator | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 FE | 64GB DDR4-3600 Octo-Channel | Windows 11 23H1 | (details)
MacBook Pro 14in | M1 Max (32 GPU Cores) | 64GB LPDDR5 6400 | macOS 12