STIGUI
V-278668CAT II — Medium severitySV-278668r1192823_rule

Microsoft Defender AV must enable script scanning.

Rule version WNDF-AV-000064 · STIG v2 · 2026-09-02

Discussion

Always-on protection consists of real-time protection, behavior monitoring, and heuristics to identify malware based on known suspicious and malicious activities. These activities include events, such as processes making unusual changes to existing files, modifying or creating automatic startup registry keys and startup locations (also known as autostart extensibility points, or ASEPs), and other changes to the file system or file structure.

Check

Verify the policy value for Computer Configuration >> Administrative Templates >> Windows Components >> Microsoft Defender Antivirus >> Real-time Protection >> Turn on script scanning is set to "Enabled"; otherwise, this is a finding.

Procedure: Use the Windows Registry Editor to navigate to the following key: HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender\Real-Time Protection

Criteria: If the value "DisableScriptScanning" is REG_DWORD = 0, this is not a finding.

If the value is 1, this is a finding.

Fix

Set the policy value for Computer Configuration >> Administrative Templates >> Windows Components >> Microsoft Defender Antivirus >> Real-time Protection >> Turn on script scanning to "Enabled".

Identifiers

Group ID
V-278668
Group title
SRG-APP-000278
Rule ID
SV-278668r1192823_rule
Check ID
C-83202r1144062_chk
Fix ID
F-83107r1190755_fix