Feature support and retirement

This article describes Microsoft Defender for IoT features and support for different capabilities within Defender for IoT.

Legacy Defender for IoT micro-agent

The Defender-IoT-micro-agent has been replaced by our newer micro-agent experience.

For more information, see Tutorial: Create a DefenderIotMicroAgent module twin (Preview) and Tutorial: Install the Defender for IoT micro agent (Preview).

Note

Defender for IoT plans to retire the micro agent on August 1, 2025.

Timeline

Microsoft Defender for IoT will continue to support the legacy Microsoft Defender for IoT experience under IoT hub until March 31, 2023.

Defender for IoT C, C#, and Edge Defender-IoT-micro-agent deprecation

The new micro agent will replace the current C, C#, and Edge Defender-IoT-micro-agent. 

The new micro agent development is based on the knowledge, and experience gathered from the legacy security module development, customers, and feedback from partners with four important improvements:

• Depth security value: The new agent will run on the host level, which will provide more visibility to the underlying operations of the device, and to allow for better security coverage.

• Improved device performance and reduced footprint: Achieved by a small RAM, and ROM memory footprint as well as low CPU consumption. 

• Plug and play: The new micro agent has no kernel level dependencies anymore, and all of its software dependencies are provided as part of its package. The micro agent supports common CPU architecture.

• Easy to deploy: The micro agent supports different distribution models, through source code, and as a binary package.

Timeline

Defender for IoT will continue to support C, C#, and Edge until March 1, 2022.

Micro agent preview support

During the preview the micro agent may experience breaking changes without notice.

Next steps

Check out Microsoft Defender for IoT agent frequently asked questions.