MDE Antivirus Policy Best Practices

Why Customizing Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Antivirus Policy Settings is Crucial

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (MDE)is a powerful endpoint security solution that provides advanced threat protection and response capabilities. While the default settings offer a good baseline of protection, customizing these settings to align with your organization’s specific needs is crucial. Here’s why adjusting the antivirus policy settings in MDE is important for your organization’s security and performance:

Tailored Threat Protection

Targeted Threats: Every organization faces unique threats depending on its industry, location, and size. Customizing antivirus policies helps defend against specific threats that are more likely to target your organization.

Advanced Threat Detection: Fine-tuning the settings allows for more effective use of advanced detection techniques, enhancing overall threat detection capabilities.

Optimized Performance

Resource Management: Default settings might not be optimized for your specific hardware and network configuration. Customizing settings ensures that the antivirus software does not unnecessarily consume resources, maintaining optimal system performance.

Minimized Business Disruption: Adjusting scan schedules and intensity can reduce the impact on users’ productivity by ensuring that resource-intensive scans are performed during off-peak hours.

Improved Incident Response

Customized Alerting: Configuring custom alert thresholds and notification settings ensures that critical alerts are prioritized and addressed promptly, reducing the response time to potential security incidents.

Automatic Remediation: Custom policies can enable or adjust automatic remediation actions based on the severity of threats, ensuring swift containment and resolution of incidents.

Inclusion of Critical Areas: Conversely, you can specify critical areas of your infrastructure that require more stringent scanning and protection, ensuring that high-risk assets are thoroughly protected.

Key Areas to Customize in Antivirus Policy Settings

Scan Settings: Adjust the frequency, depth, and timing of scans to balance protection and performance. This includes configuring quick scans, full scans, and scheduled scans according to organizational needs.

Real-Time Protection: Fine-tune real-time protection settings to ensure immediate detection and mitigation of threats without significantly impacting system performance.

Cloud Delivered Protection: Enable or adjust cloud-delivered protection settings to leverage the latest threat intelligence and provide rapid response to new threats.

Automatic Sample Submission: Configure settings for automatic sample submission to Microsoft for analysis, helping improve detection rates and reduce false positives.

Remediation Actions: Customize the remediation actions that should be taken for different types of threats, including automatic quarantine, removal, or user notification.

You can find below 3 different MDE Antivirus Policies in detail, with all the important settings configured for general use Windows Endpoints (Windows 10 and 11) as well as for general purpose and mission critical Windows Servers.