How to turn on Memory Integrity and Core Isolation in Windows 10 - Scott Hanselman's Blog

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2021-07-08 21:00:07

"Core isolation is a security feature of Microsoft Windows that protects important core processes of Windows from malicious software by isolating them in memory. It does this by running those core processes in a virtualized environment.

Memory integrity is one feature of core isolation which regularly verifies the integrity of the code running those core processes in an attempt to prevent any attacks from altering them.

Cool. Turns out this was added way back in 2017 in Windows 10 build 17093. I ran the Windows Security app on my system and noticed a few things. First, at the bottom it says "Your device meets the requirements for standard hardware security" but this can read "...for enhanced hardware security."

Some of these technologies are quite old and have been in Windows for a while. It's the collection of all them together, working as a team, that enhances your systems security. Virtualization-based Security (VBS) isolates a secure region of memory from the rest of the OS.

I started digging to understand what was interesting or unique about my system that was preventing me from turning these new features on. Additionally I wanted to make sure I was ready for Windows 11 whenever it arrives and adds more security features and requirements.