Windows Defender ATP EDR capability for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1

[Brink]

We’re announcing the general availability of Windows Defender ATP’s endpoint detection & response (EDR) capability for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, helping customers achieve the best security possible while transitioning to Windows 10.

With Windows 10 we’ve built the most secure Windows ever, by hardening the platform itself and by developing Windows Defender ATP – a unified endpoint security platform for preventative protection, post-breach detection, and automated investigation & response.

To help customers stay secure while upgrading to Windows 10, we’ve built an EDR solution for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 that is simple to deploy and seamless to end-users, providing behavioral based threat detection, investigation and response capabilities.

Windows Defender ATP for Windows 7, and Windows 8.1 provides deep visibility on activities that are happening on endpoints, including process, file, network, registry and memory activities, providing security teams with rich, correlated insights into activities and threats happening on older versions of Windows.

Figure 1: Windows Defender ATP detects attack activity on Windows 7

Detections and events from Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 are surfaced in Windows Defender Security Center alongside data from other endpoints, providing a single pane of glass for security teams to investigate and respond to incidents across their environment.

We’ve previously made this solution available to customers through public preview, working closely with our customers to validate, fine tune and refine the service. We're happy to announce that this functionality is now generally available, allowing customers to deploy at scale across their environment.

For more information on how you can onboard Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 machines, check out our documentation.

Thank you
The Windows Defender ATP team

Source: Windows Defender ATP's EDR capability for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 now generally available - Microsoft Tech Community - 355535

 

[michael diemer]

So, should I ditch MSE and run Defender instead? This is potentially big news. If it's not another end-run by MS to "prepare" our computers for Windows 10.

 

[Brink]

Advanced Threat Protection remains an Enterprise and Pro only feature. It can be used on devices running Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Pro or Enterprise, and Windows 8.1 Pro or Enterprise.

It requires System Center Endpoint Protection and installation of the Microsoft Monitoring Agent (MMA).

Administrators find additional setup information in the onboarding instructions.

 

[michael diemer]

Thanks Brink.

 

[Brink]