MT.1160 - Signatures should be checked before scan.
Overview
Checks that signature checking before scan is enabled for zero-day protection in the assigned Microsoft Defender Antivirus policies.
Scans with outdated signatures may miss recent threats and zero-day attacks, leaving endpoints exposed to newly discovered vulnerabilities.
Remediation action:
- Open Microsoft Endpoint Manager > Endpoint Security > Antivirus
- Edit the relevant Microsoft Defender Antivirus policy
- Enable Check for Signatures Before Running Scan
If your antivirus settings are split across several policies, this setting only needs to be set in one of them, as long as that policy is assigned to every device that needs it. No other assigned policy should set a different value: Intune does not merge this setting, so a device that receives both values may end up with either one, or none.
Related links
- Policy merge and conflicts for Antivirus policy settings
- Configure Microsoft Defender Antivirus
- Microsoft Endpoint Manager
Test Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Test ID | MT.1160 |
| Severity | Low |
| Suite | Maester |
| Product | Defender |
| Related products | Intune |
| Feature | Endpoint antivirus |
| Area | Devices and endpoints |
| Resource type | Policy |
| User impact | Low |
| Implementation cost | Low |
| MITRE ATT&CK | None |
| Supports controls | nist-800-53-r5:SI-3 |
| PowerShell test | Test-MtMdeSignatureBeforeScan |
| Services | Graph |
Source
- Test:
tests/maester/defender/Test.MT.1160.ps1 - Documentation:
tests/maester/defender/Test.MT.1160.md