Microsoft Enables Tamper Protection for Windows 10 Home Users
Microsoft will enable the Tamper Protection setting for Windows 10 Home users from Tuesday. That should stop viruses from adjusting certain settings of Microsoft Defender Antivirus. The setting will be enabled for users in the coming weeks.
Tamper Protection has been in the operating system since the May 2019 Update, or version 1903, and could be tested by Insider users. Now Microsoft is announcing that the feature is ready for the general public and will be enabled in phases by default for both consumer and commercial customers.
Tamper Protection ensures that malware can no longer disable certain settings. This concerns real-time protection, cloud-delivered protection, the function that monitors suspicious attachments and downloaded files, the function that monitors the behavior of processes and security intelligence updates. These settings can now no longer be adjusted by, for example, adjusting the registry.
The feature is primarily intended for Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection users. ATP is a commercial, paid version mainly used by business customers. However, Microsoft confirms to ZDNet that the feature will also be available to home users in the free version of Microsoft Defender and will be enabled by default. According to ZDNet, the ATP version of Tamper Protection offers better security because, for example, this setting can only be adjusted by administrators via Microsoft Intune.
Although Tamper Protection only works on the 1903 version of Windows 10 for now, Microsoft would like to make it work on older versions as well, according to ZDNet. The feature will be enabled for home users in the coming weeks, according to the site. Users can now also enable the feature themselves, in the virus and threat protection settings of Microsoft Defender Antivirus.
According to Microsoft, viruses like Nodersok and Trojan Trickbot have tried to disable Microsoft Defender Antivirus in the past. With Tamper Protection, Microsoft wants to counter that.