Windows 10: Enable Data Persistence for Microsoft Edge in Application Guard

Brink · Jun 14, 2017

How to: Enable Data Persistence for Microsoft Edge in Application Guard

Enable Microsoft Edge Data Persistence with Windows Defender Application Guard in Windows 10

Microsoft Edge is a new web browser that is available across the Windows 10 device family. It is designed for Windows 10 to be faster, safer, and compatible with the modern Web.

Starting with Windows 10 Enterprise build 16188, Microsoft has made it easy to test drive Microsoft Edge with Application Guard.

Microsoft Edge running in Application Guard provides enterprises the maximum level of protection from malware and zero day attacks against Windows. Windows Defender Application Guard for Microsoft Edge is a lightweight virtual machine that helps isolate potentially malicious website activity from reaching your operating systems, apps, and data.

There is no persistence of any cookies or local storage when an Application Guard window is closed in Microsoft Edge.

Three core features of Windows Defender Application Guard:

Isolated Browsing - Windows Defender Application Guard uses the latest virtualization technology to help protect your operating system by creating an isolated environment for your Microsoft Edge session.

Help Safeguard your PC - Windows Defender Application Guard starts up every time you visit a non-work-related site to help keep potentially malicious attacks away from your PC.

Malware Removal - Any websites you visit, files you download, or settings you change while in this isolated environment are deleted when you sign out of Windows, wiping out any potential malware.

Starting with Windows 10 Enterprise build 16232, Microsoft added support for Microsoft Edge data persistence while using Application Guard. Once enabled, data such as your favorites, cookies, and saved passwords will be persisted across Application Guard sessions. The persisted data will be not be shared or surfaced on the host, but it will be available for future Microsoft Edge in Application Guard sessions.

When you have enabled Data Persistence for Application Guard, the site you saved to your Favorites will be available for later use, with Microsoft Edge in Application Guard, even after reboots as well as build to build upgrades of Windows 10.

Windows Defender Application Guard will need to be open a new Application Guard window in Microsoft Edge.

This tutorial will show you how to enable or disable Microsoft Edge data persistence while using Windows Defender Application Guard for all users in Windows 10 Enterprise.

*Warning You must be signed in as an administrator to enable or disable Microsoft Edge data persistence with Application Guard.

CONTENTS:

Option One: Enable or Disable Data Persistence in Microsoft Edge with Application Guard from Local Group Policy

Option Two: Enable or Disable Data Persistence in Microsoft Edge with Application Guard using a REG file

EXAMPLE: Windows Defender Application Guard for Microsoft Edge

OPTION ONE [/i] Enable or Disable Data Persistence in Microsoft Edge with Application Guard from Local Group Policy
1. Open the Local Group Policy Editor.

2. Navigate to the location below in the left pane of the Local Group Policy Editor. (see screenshot below)
*Arrow Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Defender Application Guard

3. In the right pane of Windows Defender Application Guard in Local Group Policy Editor, double click/tap on the Allow data persistance for Windows Defender Application Guard policy to edit it. (see screenshot above)

4. Do step 5 (enable) or step 6 (disable) below for what you would like to do.

5. To Enable Data Persistence in Microsoft Edge with Application Guard
A) Select (dot) Enabled, click/tap on OK, and go to step 7 below. (see screenshot below)

6. To Disable Data Persistence in Microsoft Edge with Application Guard
A) Select (dot) Not Configured or Disabled, click/tap on OK, and go to step 7 below. (see screenshot below)

*note Not Configured is the default setting.

7. When finished, you can close the Local Group Policy Editor if you like.

OPTION TWO [/i] Enable or Disable Data Persistence in Microsoft Edge with Application Guard using a REG file

*note The downloadable .reg files below will add and modify the DWORD value in the registry keys below.

Code:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Group Policy Objects\{06B65579-249A-4A42-A45F-5DE7BC943143}Machine\Software\Policies\Microsoft\AppHVSI

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Group Policy Objects\{06B65579-249A-4A42-A45F-5DE7BC943143}Machine\Software\Policies\Microsoft\AppHVSI
Click to expand...

AllowPersistence DWORD

0 or delete = Disable
1 = Enable

1. Do step 2 (enable) or step 3 (disable) below for what you would like to do.

2. To Enable Data Persistence in Microsoft Edge with Application Guard
A) Click/tap on the Download button below to download the file below, and go to step 4 below.

Enable_data_persistance_using_Microsoft_Edge_with_Application_Guard.reg

Download

3. To Disable Data Persistence in Microsoft Edge with Application Guard
*note This is the default setting.
A) Click/tap on the Download button below to download the file below, and go to step 4 below.

Disable_data_persistance_using_Microsoft_Edge_with_Application_Guard.reg

Download
4. Save the .reg file to your desktop.

5. Double click/tap on the downloaded .reg file to merge it.

6. If prompted, click/tap on Run, Yes (UAC), Yes, and OK to approve the merge.

7. restart the computer to apply.

8. If you like, you can now delete the downloaded .reg file.

That's it,
Shawn

Related Tutorials

How to Turn On or Off Windows Defender Application Guard for Microsoft Edge in Windows 10

How to Open a New Application Guard Window in Microsoft Edge in Windows 10

Enable Download to Host from Windows Defender Application Guard Microsoft Edge session in Windows 10

How to Turn On or Off Save Data in Application Guard for Microsoft Edge in Windows 10

How to Turn On or Off Copy and Paste in Application Guard for Microsoft Edge in Windows 10

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:)

Battleroyale · Oct 26, 2019

Enable Data Persistence for Microsoft Edge in Application Guard

I'm using Windows 10 Pro N and this just isn't working for me. I've enabled it, restarted my computer, opened Edge in Application Guard and logged into my account on a website. A restart later and I'm logged out.

Edge specifically tells me no history will be stored if I press ctrl+H in the browser.

Is this an Enterprise-only feature?

Brink · Oct 26, 2019

Introducing Windows Defender Application Guard for Microsoft Edge

We’re determined to make Microsoft Edge the safest and most secure browser. Over the past two years, we have been continuously innovating, and we’re proud of the progress we’ve made. This is reflected by Microsoft Edge having the fewest vulnerabilities of any major browser on Windows since our release last year.

Browser vulnerabilities (as of September 2016) for Microsoft Edge, Chrome, and Firefox (per the National Vulnerability Database) since Microsoft Edge was released.

While no modern browser—or any complex application—is free of vulnerabilities, the majority of the vulnerabilities for Microsoft Edge have been responsibly reported by professional security researchers who work with the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) and the Microsoft Edge team to ensure customers are protected well before any attacker might use these vulnerabilities in the wild. Even better, there is no evidence that any vulnerabilities have been exploited in the wild as zero-day attacks.

However, many businesses worldwide have come under increasing threat of targeted attacks, where attackers are crafting specialized attacks against a particular business, attempting to take control of corporate networks and data. For the most security-conscience businesses, we are introducing a new layer of defense-in-depth protection: Windows Defender Application Guard for Windows 10 Enterprise. Application Guard provides unprecedented protection against targeted threats using Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualization technology.

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Understanding targeted attacks against large Enterprises

The threat landscape has changed significantly in recent years. Today, over 90% of attacks use a hyperlink to initiate the attack to steal credentials, install malware, or exploit vulnerabilities.

This is damaging not only to the business attacked, but also to the thousands, if not millions of users whose accounts and personal data may be stolen. Highly motivated and persistent attackers will often start with a social engineering trick: creating a well-crafted and personal email to known employees of the company. This email, which will often appear to be from a legitimate authority in the company, may ask the employee to click a link to read a supposedly important document. Unfortunately, that link is to a specially crafted malicious web site that may use a previously undisclosed vulnerability to install malware on the user’s machine. Once established on that single computer, the attackers can then steal credentials and start to probe the rest of the network for other vulnerable machines, repeating the process on other computers until they achieve their objective, whether that is stealing data, intellectual property, or disrupting the business.

Breaking the attacker playbook

We’re taking a systematic approach to disrupting these attackers by providing our customers with the tools they need to defend against these vectors of attack. Application Guard is designed to stop attackers from establishing a foothold on the local machine or from expanding out into the rest of the corporate network.

By using our industry leading virtualization technology, potential threats are not only isolated from the network and system, but will be completely removed when the container is closed.

Digging deeper into Application Guard

Application Guard leverages virtualization technology born in the Microsoft Cloud to accomplish this disruption.

When a user browses to a trusted web site, for example an internal accounting system web application, Microsoft Edge operates as it does today. It has access to local storage, can authenticate the user to internal sites with corporate credentials, standard cookies work, the user can save files to the local machine, and in general Windows just works. This mode, outlined in blue in the chart below, is known as the Host version of Windows.

Application Guard isolates untrusted sites in a new instance of Windows at the hardware layer.

However, when an employee browses to a site that is not recognized or trusted by the network administrator, Application Guard steps in to isolate the potential threat. As shown in the mode outlined in red above, Application Guard creates a new instance of Windows at the hardware layer, with an entirely separate copy of the kernel and the minimum Windows Platform Services required to run Microsoft Edge. The underlying hardware enforces that this separate copy of Windows has no access to the user’s normal operating environment.

Application Guard’s enforcement includes completely blocking access to memory, local storage, other installed applications, corporate network endpoints, or any other resources of interest to the attacker. This separate copy of Windows has no access to any credentials, including domain credentials, that may be stored in the permanent credential store.

Most of the time, even untrusted sites are not malicious and perfectly safe to visit, and the user just expects them to work. This isolated environment allows these sites to function essentially as they would if they were running on the host version of Windows. In this case Application Guard does provide the essential features that users would expect to work, even when browsing untrusted sites, such as being able to copy and paste with the Windows clipboard, and being able to print content from those web sites to their work printer. This allows the user to still be productive even while the host is being protected by Application Guard. The enterprise administrator has control over this functionality using Microsoft management tools and policy, and can choose what they are comfortable with based on their own risk assessment.

Defense-in-depth isolation for enterprises

To improve on the security offered by purely software based sandboxes, Microsoft worked with several enterprise and government customers on a hardware based isolation approach to address these concerns. With Application Guard, Microsoft Edge protects your enterprise from advanced attacks that can infiltrate your network and devices via the Internet, creating a safer, worry-free browsing experience for customers.

But what happens when the untrusted site is actually part of an attacker’s malicious plan? Let’s revisit the attack described above. An attacker sends a well-crafted email to an innocent employee of the company enticing them to visit a link on a site under the attacker’s control. The innocent user, not noticing anything suspicious about the mail, clicks on the link to an untrusted location. In order to proactively keep the user and enterprise resources safe, Application Guard coordinates with Microsoft Edge to open that site in a temporary and isolated copy of Windows. In this case, even if the attacker’s code is successful in attempting to exploit the browser, the attacker finds their code running in a clean environment with no interesting data, no access to any user credentials, and no access to other endpoints on the corporate network. The attack is completely disrupted. As soon as the user is done, whether or not they are even aware of the attack having taken place, this temporary container is thrown away, and any malware is discarded along with it. There is no way for the attacker to persist on that local machine, and even a compromised browser instance has no foothold to mount further attacks against the company’s network. After deletion, a fresh new container is created for future browsing sessions.

Web developers and Application Guard

The good news for web developers is that they do not need to do anything different with their site code – Microsoft Edge renders sites in Application Guard fundamentally the same way it does in the host version of Windows. There is no need to detect when Microsoft Edge is running in this mode, nor any need to account for behavior differences. Since this temporary container is destroyed when the user is done, there is no persistence of any cookies or local storage when the user is finished.

We’re committed keeping Enterprise users and data safe and secure

Our mission at Microsoft is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. With Windows Defender Application Guard, enterprise users can take advantage of the vast power of Internet sites and services while still protecting corporate and personal data. This capability makes Microsoft Edge the most secure browser for the Enterprise.

― John Hazen, Principal Program Manager, Microsoft Edge
― Chas Jeffries, Principal Program Manager, Application Guard
Click to expand...

Source: Introducing Windows Defender Application Guard for Microsoft Edge | Microsoft Edge Dev Blog

ddelo · Oct 26, 2019

Windows Defender Application Guard?

Shawn, has already done a great job on that:

*Arrow Turn On or Off Windows Defender Application Guard in Windows 10 | Tutorials

*Arrow Open New Application Guard Window in Microsoft Edge | Tutorials

*Arrow Turn On or Off Save Data in Application Guard for Microsoft Edge | Tutorials

The test results, from someone used it:
Turn On or Off Windows Defender Application Guard in Windows 10 - Page 2 - | Tutorials

Steve C · Oct 26, 2019

Windows Defender Application Guard?

Shawn, has already done a great job on that:

*Arrow Turn On or Off Windows Defender Application Guard in Windows 10 | Tutorials

*Arrow Open New Application Guard Window in Microsoft Edge | Tutorials

*Arrow Turn On or Off Save Data in Application Guard for Microsoft Edge | Tutorials

The test results, from someone used it:
Turn On or Off Windows Defender Application Guard in Windows 10 - Page 2 - | Tutorials
Click to expand...

Thanks - it turns out the forum search results were blocked by my security software!

Compumind · Oct 26, 2019

Windows Defender Application Guard?

I noticed a setting to enable Windows Defender Application Guard in Edge but can't find discussion of it on the forum. Has anyone used this feature and found it useful?
Click to expand...

This might be of use to you, as well...

Windows Defender Application Guard (Windows 10) | Microsoft Docs

*Smile

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