The Windows 10 comes with the all-new Windows Security that makes your life a lot easier when it comes controlling and managing security relate features, which are usually clumsy and hard to manage. Starting from Windows 10 build 17093, Device Security option has been added to the Windows Security that allows you to monitor status and management of security features built into your devices. There is one exciting feature that comes with Windows 10 Security centre, “Core Isolation” that enables you to enhance some of the security features which are not active by default. In this article, we shall discuss on Windows own “Core Isolation” feature that provides Virtualization based security for added protection against malwares and viruses.
What is Core Isolation?
- Core Isolation is a Virtualization based security feature added to Windows 10 that allows you to protect your system from malwares and viruses by isolating operating systems’ resources from the computer programs.
- Memory Integrity is an integral feature of Core Isolation that prevents malicious code from accessing high-security processes in the time of the attack.
- Memory integrity makes sure that the code running in Windows Kernel is entirely safe and trustworthy.
- Memory integrity makes use of hardware-level Virtualization and Hyper-V to protect the Windows resources from injection and prevents the malicious code from accessing the sensitive contents.
Please note that the below points before proceeding further,
- Memory integrity feature is available only on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016.
- The hardware-level Virtualization should be enabled from the UEFI firmware settings.
Here we shall be showing you two different ways to turn on/off the Memory Integrity feature on your compatible device. This can be achieved in two different ways as mentioned below,
#1 Turn On or Off Tabs in apps (Sets) in Windows Security
- Search for the keyword “Windows Security” in the Start menu and click on the first option to open Windows Security tab.
- Then click on the “Device Security” option as mentioned in the below screenshot,
- Under “Core isolation” section, click on the “Core isolation details” link to continue,
- Under the “Memory integrity” menu, you shall be able to see a toggle button to turn on/off this feature. For the first time user, this option should be disabled, click on the button to turn it on.
- This process will take a while to finish, once this is done, please restart your device to see the changes.
If you want to disable the Memory integrity feature, you just need to toggle the above mentioned button.
#2 Turn On or Off Core Isolation Memory Integrity using a REG file
The second way allows you to do the enable/disable the Memory Integrity feature with a few clicks.
If you want to set the Core Isolation feature form Registry editor manually, then follow the below-mentioned steps,
- Press the Windows + R key on your keyboard to open the Run dialog. Type “regedit” and then hit the enter button to open the Registry editor.
- Navigate to the below-mentioned path in the registry editor,
“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\DeviceGuard\Scenarios\HypervisorEnforcedCodeIntegrity”
- Edit the “Enabled” field and set the below-mentioned values as per your requirement and hit the Ok button to save the changes,
- 0: Off
- 1: On
Conclusion:
In this article, we had walked you through the importance of Core Isolation feature and the two different ways to enable/disable it on your Windows 10 device. MyWindowsHub team always recommends you to turn this feature on to isolate the core operating system reserved processes from the third-party computer programs for better security and protection against the malwares.
About Harsit Mohapatra
Harsit Mohapatra is a full-time Software Engineer passionate and hungry for tech updates and knowledge. Besides being a crazy software developer, he is an avid traveller and loves capturing the things that give him a perception through his lenses