SMM Firmware Protection version three This feature is currently forward-looking and requires new hardware that will be made available soon. There are already devices in the market today that offer SMM Firmware Protection versions one and two. Based on the platform, the underlying hardware and firmware, there are three versions of SMM Firmware Protection (one, two and three), with each subsequent versions offering stronger protections than the preceding ones. With this improvement, the OS can detect a higher level of SMM compliance, enabling devices to be even more hardened against SMM exploits and vulnerabilities. In this release, Windows Defender System Guard enables an even higher level of System Management Mode (SMM) Firmware Protection that goes beyond checking the OS memory and secrets to other resources like registers and IO.

This feature is built on top of System Guard Secure Launch to reduce the firmware attack surface and ensure that the System Management Mode (SMM) firmware on the device is operating in a healthy manner - specifically, SMM code can't access the OS memory and secrets.

System Guard has improved a feature in this version of Windows called SMM Firmware Protection. Thus, the LTSC 2021 release is not a direct replacement for LTSC 2019, which has a 10 year lifecycle.įor more information about the lifecycle for this release, see The next Windows 10 Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) release.

Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021 has a 5 year lifecycle ( IoT Enterprise LTSC continues to have a 10 year lifecycle).

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