The latest round of OS security updates in the March Patch Tuesday introduced another issue along with the fixes. This time, the issue was resolved in the Windows Defender Security app. Windows Defender was incorrectly reporting that the Local Security Authority (LSA) protection was disabled. Both Windows 11 versions, 21H2 and 22H2, were affected by this problem.
According to Microsoft, the problem appeared after installing “Update for Microsoft Defender antimalware platform – KB5007651 (Version 1.0.2302.21002). Microsoft explained that users may have received a security notification or warning stating that the “Local Security protection is off,” leaving their devices potentially vulnerable. Along with that, even after re-enabling the protection, Windows devices could constantly prompt for a restart. It’s worth mentioning that this issue only affected the specific update mentioned above, and not the other Windows updates released on March 14, 2023, including KB5023706 and KB5023698.
During the bug investigation, Microsoft provided a temporary workaround for this issue. However, after one month, the Redmon giant announced that they have successfully resolved the issue. To fix the new issue you should update to the latest Defender version 1.0.2303.27001.
Unfortunately, new issues were born. A couple of days ago, Microsoft updated its Windows health dashboard, stating that the problem of LSA being incorrectly reported as off has now been definitively resolved.
According to Microsoft, the recommended version to resolve the latest Defender issue is version 1.0.2306.10002. To fix the problem, simply update the Windows Security app to the latest version using the Windows Update feature.