Assistance Needed to Enable Microsoft Defender Real-Time Protection on Azure VM

Question

Good afternoon,

I am attempting to enable Microsoft Defender Real-Time Protection on my Azure VM running Windows Server 2022. However, the option to enable it is disabled, displaying the message: “This setting is managed by your administrator.”

The VM is associated with a Microsoft Entra Domain Services that i created too. I’m not certain if this association could impact the ability to enable real-time protection, but if it does, I would appreciate guidance on what changes might be necessary.

As the creator and administrator of this VM and the Microsoft Entra Domain Services, I am unaware of any configurations that would cause this behaviour.

I have tried the following troubleshooting steps, but none have resolved the issue:

• Modified the registry key and deleted the Windows Defender folder.
• Reset Group Policy settings by configuring “Turn off real-time protection” to ‘Not Configured.’
• Reinstalled Windows Security.
• Attempted various other solutions found online.

If anyone has encountered a similar issue with an Azure VM and can provide guidance on enabling real-time protection, I would greatly appreciate your help.

Thanks Cris

Answer 1

Hi @Cristopher Aguilera

Thank you for posting this in Microsoft Q&A.

I'm glad that you were able to resolve your issue and thank you for posting your solution so that others experiencing the same thing can easily reference this! Since the Microsoft Q&A community has a policy that "The question author cannot accept their own answer. They can only accept answers by others ", I'll repost your solution in case you'd like to "Accept " the answer.

Issue:

Need to Enable Microsoft Defender Real-Time Protection on Azure VM

Solution:

Issue Fixed by @Cristopher Aguilera

Upon reviewing the configuration, I confirm that Real-Time Protection is already enabled on the VM.

If you have any other questions or are still running into more issues, please let me know. Thank you again for your time and patience throughout this issue.

Please remember to "Accept Answer" if any answer/reply helped, so that others in the community facing similar issues can easily find the solution.