Microsoft Defender AV must enable real-time protection and Security Intelligence Updates during OOBE.

Severity	Group ID	Group Title	Version	Rule ID	Date	STIG Version
medium	V-278669	SRG-APP-000278	WNDF-AV-000065	SV-278669r1144065_rule	2025-11-25	2

Description
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.

Description

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.

ℹ️ Check
Verify the policy value for Computer Configuration >> Administrative Templates >> Windows Components >> Microsoft Defender Antivirus >> Real-time Protection >> Configure real-time protection and Security Intelligence Updates during OOBE 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 "OobeEnableRtpAndSigUpdate" is REG_DWORD = 1, this is not a finding. If the value is 0, this is a finding.

ℹ️ Check

Verify the policy value for Computer Configuration >> Administrative Templates >> Windows Components >> Microsoft Defender Antivirus >> Real-time Protection >> Configure real-time protection and Security Intelligence Updates during OOBE 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 "OobeEnableRtpAndSigUpdate" is REG_DWORD = 1, this is not a finding. If the value is 0, this is a finding.

✔️ Fix
Set the policy value for Computer Configuration >> Administrative Templates >> Windows Components >> Microsoft Defender Antivirus >> Real-time Protection >> Configure real-time protection and Security Intelligence Updates during OOBE to "Enabled". Click "OK". Click "Apply".