For DCOM Hardening in KB5004442 - What is Registry Action On June 14, 2022

Question

We have applied KB5004442 to our machines for DCOM Hardening, but do not see the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Ole\AppCompat\RequireIntegrityActivationAuthenticationLevel on our machines. We have manually created the DWORD entry, set to 1 (enabled), rebooted and see that our app needs associated changes. However, we will not be able to rollout the app update by the intermediate June 14, 2022 deadline.
In order to avoid user downtime, if our ITS pushes out a policy to create the registry key and set to 0 (disabled), will this avoid downtime on June 14, 2022? That is, on June 14, 2022, will the Windows system see that the registry key already exists and thus NOT set to 1?

Answer 1

on June 14th such that DCOM Hardening is enabled?

No, you'll be fine until 3/14/2023

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