Staying up to date

The different components of MDE need to be kept up to date – and it’s not just security intelligence updates you need to stay on top of. Here are the key component updates you need to be ready to deploy on a regular basis after you install MDE.

Cold snack

Even if you are running Defender Antivirus in passive mode, you will want to update it regularly to ensure you have the latest capabilities and protection for features that depend on it.

Windows

As outlined in Chapter 2, Exploring Next-Generation Protection, for Windows, Defender updates can flow from Windows Update or Microsoft Update. They can also come straight from the Microsoft Security Intelligence page (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi), either as a manual download or as a fallback location. You can define the order using configuration.

In Table 7.1, we see the breakdown of cadences for the various components, available update methods, and update mediums:

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