After the Elastic Agent is installed with the Elastic Defend integration, several protections features — including preventions against malware, ransomware, memory threats, and malicious behavior — are automatically enabled on protected hosts (some features require a Platinum or Enterprise license). If needed, you can update the integration policy to configure protection settings, event collection, antivirus settings, trusted applications, event filters, host isolation exceptions, and blocked applications to meet your organization’s security needs.

You can also create multiple Elastic Defend integration policies to maintain unique configuration profiles. To create an additional Elastic Defend integration policy, go to Management → Integrations, then follow the steps for adding the Elastic Defend integration.

To configure an integration policy:

Malware protectionedit

Elastic Defend malware prevention detects and stops malicious attacks by using a machine learning model that looks for static attributes to determine if a file is malicious or benign.

By default, malware protection is enabled on Windows, macOS, and Linux hosts. To disable malware protection, switch the Malware protections enabled toggle off.

Malware protection levels are:

Select Notify user to send a push notification in the host operating system when activity is detected or prevented. Notifications are enabled by default for the Prevent option.

Malware protection also allows you to manage a blocklist to prevent specified applications from running on hosts, extending the list of processes that Elastic Defend considers malicious. Use the Blocklist enabled toggle to enable or disable this feature for all hosts associated with the integration policy. To configure the blocklist, refer to Blocklist.

Manage quarantined filesedit

When Prevent is enabled for malware protection, Elastic Defend will quarantine any malicious file it finds. Specifically Elastic Defend will remove the file from its current location, encrypt it with the encryption key ELASTIC, move it to a different folder, and rename it as a GUID string, such as 318e70c2-af9b-4c3a-939d-11410b9a112c.

The quarantine folder location varies by operating system:

To restore a quarantined file to its original state and location, add an exception to the rule that identified the file as malicious. If the exception would’ve stopped the rule from identifying the file as malicious, Elastic Defend restores the file.

You can access a quarantined file by using the get-file response action command in the response console. To do this, copy the path from the alert’s Quarantined file path field (file.Ext.quarantine_path), which appears under Highlighted fields in the alert details flyout. Then paste the value into the --path parameter. This action doesn’t restore the file to its original location, so you will need to do this manually.

Ransomware protectionedit

Behavioral ransomware prevention detects and stops ransomware attacks on Windows systems by analyzing data from low-level system processes. It is effective across an array of widespread ransomware families — including those targeting the system’s master boot record.

Ransomware protection is a paid feature and is enabled by default if you have a Platinum or Enterprise license. If you upgrade to a Platinum or Enterprise license from Basic or Gold, ransomware protection will be disabled by default.

Ransomware protection levels are:

When ransomware protection is enabled, canary files placed in targeted locations on your hosts provide an early warning system for potential ransomware activity. When a canary file is modified, Elastic Defend immediately generates a ransomware alert. If prevent ransomware is active, Elastic Defend terminates the process that modified the file.

Select Notify user to send a push notification in the host operating system when activity is detected or prevented. Notifications are enabled by default for the Prevent option.

Memory threat protectionedit

Memory threat protection detects and stops in-memory threats, such as shellcode injection, which are used to evade traditional file-based detection techniques.

Memory threat protection is a paid feature and is enabled by default if you have a Platinum or Enterprise license. If you upgrade to a Platinum or Enterprise license from Basic or Gold, memory threat protection will be disabled by default.

Memory threat protection levels are:

Select Notify user to send a push notification in the host operating system when activity is detected or prevented. Notifications are enabled by default for the Prevent option.

Malicious behavior protectionedit

Malicious behavior protection detects and stops threats by monitoring the behavior of system processes for suspicious activity. Behavioral signals are much more difficult for adversaries to evade than traditional file-based detection techniques.

Malicious behavior protection is a paid feature and is enabled by default if you have a Platinum or Enterprise license. If you upgrade to a Platinum or Enterprise license from Basic or Gold, malicious behavior protection will be disabled by default.

Malicious behavior protection levels are:

Select whether you want to use Reputation service for additional protection. Elastic’s reputation service leverages our extensive threat intelligence knowledge to make high confidence real-time prevention decisions. For example, reputation service can detect suspicious downloads of binaries with low or malicious reputation.

Select Notify user to send a push notification in the host operating system when activity is detected or prevented. Notifications are enabled by default for the Prevent option.

Attack surface reductionedit

This section helps you reduce vulnerabilities that attackers can target on Windows endpoints.

Event collectionedit

In the Settings section, select which categories of events to collect on each operating system. Most categories are collected by default, as seen below.

Register Elastic Security as antivirus (optional)edit

With Elastic Defend version 7.10 or later on Windows 7 or later, you can configure Elastic Security as your antivirus software by turning on Register as antivirus.

Advanced policy settings (optional)edit

Users with unique configuration and security requirements can select Show advanced settings to configure the policy to support advanced use cases. Hover over each setting to view its description.

This section includes:

Save the general policy settingsedit

After you have configured the general settings on the Policy settings tab, click Save. A confirmation message appears.