Windows Defender conflicting with McAfee ENS 10.6 and higher

[BKLadley]

I had previously brought up some anomalies with my internal Endpoint Security team that appeared as if Windows Defender was interfering with McAfee ENS 10.6.1.x and newer versions. I've been working on an internal ticket which is a recurring issue for one of our customers since their system was upgraded to Windows 10 v1809 (within the last few weeks) where hyperlinks in emails were being blocked by antivirus. According to the logs McAfee was not blocking it and there were Event log entries pointing to Windows Defender being the source of the block. I did a quick check of the customer's registry at the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender\" key and found that the 'DisableAntiSpyware' DWORD value was not present unlike mine which has the value set to 1. Adding this registry value to disable the Windows Defender, which is supposed to be disabled in favor of McAfee ENS, has resolved the recurring issue that the customer has been experiencing.


Does Windows Defender remove the registry value upon re-installation or upgrade of the Windows OS?

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