The Huntress Managed Microsoft Defender Antivirus only officially supports Pro versions of Windows 8.1 and up (not Home and ARM-based versions of Windows)
Huntress Feature |
Windows Pro, Education, Enterprise |
Windows Home 8.1 - 10 - 11 |
Windows Server 2016+ |
Legacy Windows Versions * |
Footholds![]() |
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Managed Antivirus |
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Ransomware Canaries![]() |
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External Recon![]() |
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Host Isolation |
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Process Insights | ![]() |
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* Legacy Windows Versions include Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2008, Server 2008 R2, Business Server 2011, Server 2012, Server 2012 R2 (Product support is limited to "best-effort" for operating systems no longer supported by Microsoft)
Huntress for macOS is coming soon. Please upvote the feature request here to be added to the waitlist
Resource Dependencies
Resource Utilization
- Huntress Installer (HuntressInstaller.exe)
- Requires Administrative permissions to run
- Roughly 25MB of disk space.
- Huntress Agent (HuntressAgent.exe)
- The typical Huntress Agent consumes less than 1% CPU and 20MB of RAM. On average, the size of the survey sent to the Huntress Cloud (AWS) is about 700KB. If you notice an issue with Huntress utilization, try temporarily disabling your AV on your machine to see if the issue subsides. Sometimes you need to create exclusions in your AV.
- HuntressAgent.exe
- Written in Golang
- Does not have any dependencies
- The Huntress Agent uses TLS 1.2/1.3 to communicate with the Huntress Dashboard.
- HuntressUpdater.exe
- Written in .NET (using the utility wyUpdate). The Huntress Installer will automatically install the applicable .NET 2.0 or .NET 4.0 version of the updater utility. The installer will also auto-select the correct 32-bit or 64-bit Agent for you based on the version of Windows.
- The HuntressUpdater uses
- hUpdate (new updater) users TLS 1.2/1.3, if you are blocking TLS 1.1, you can request this Updater from support.
- wyUpdate (old updater) which uses TLS 1.1 to fetch updates. If TLS 1.1 is blocked/disabled, the Huntress Agent will fail to update. This updater is being phased out.
Footholds
Windows Compatibility
See table above for compatibility matrix.
Workstations
Our Agent currently supports 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x86_64) versions of Windows starting with Windows Vista / Server 2008.
The Huntress Agent supports Windows 11 ARM only if it is the full version of Windows. Devices such as the Surface Pro X that run Windows "S" or "RT" are not supported.
- Windows Vista
- Windows 7
- Windows 8
- Windows 8.1
- Windows 10
- Home
- Pro
- Pro for Workstations
- Pro Education
- Education
- Enterprise
- Windows 11
- Home
- Pro
- Pro for Workstations
- Pro Education
- Education
- Enterprise
Servers
Huntress supports all versions of Windows Server starting with 2008, including, Hyper-V Server, Windows Server Essentials, Windows Server Standard, Windows Server Data Center, etc.
We also support the Core versions of all Server versions (please follow Single Command Installation). To utilize the Managed AV service, the "Windows Defender" Role needs to be installed (support for 2016+), please see Managed AV Support OSes for more information.
The Huntress Agent works with all Windows Server Roles including, Hyper-V, MS SQL Server, RDS (including RDS with CALs), Exchange, etc. Please note that if you are running a virtual environment, you do need a licensed copy of Huntress for each machine that's running Windows. For example, the Huntress Agent running on a Hyper-V server does not have visibility into its VMs.
- Server 2008
- Server 2008 R2
- Small Business Server 2011
- Server 2012
- Server 2012 R2
- Server 2016+
Mac
Huntress for macOS is coming soon. Please upvote the feature request here to be added to the waitlist.
Managed Antivirus
Workstation
Managed Defender will work with all versions Windows 8.1+, but will have limited functionality for non-pro versions (ie. Home, S), for these versions, Managed AV can run in audit mode and report on these systems, but cannot push policy updates to them.
- Windows 8.1 Pro &
- Windows 8.1 Enterprise
- Windows RT 8.1 (limited functionality)
- Windows 8.1
- Limited functionality on Windows 8.1 Home
- Windows 10 Pro &
- Windows 10 Pro Education
- Windows 10 Pro for Workstations
- Windows 10 Enterprise
- Windows 10 Education
- Limited functionality on Windows 10 Home
- Windows 11 Pro &
- Pro for Workstations
- Education
- Pro Education
- Enterprise
- Limited functionality on Windows 11 Home
Server
Managed AV works with Windows Server 2016, 2019, 2022 but may show empty under "registered antiviruses" (Since there is no Windows Security Center on Servers, we must manually classify AV products which can sometimes affect which AV shows up in our portal [no effect on operation!])
Only Server 2016+ is supported. All versions prior to 2016 (2012r2, 2012, 2008 r2, 2008...) are not support by Managed AV.
- Windows Server 2016+ (with the 'Windows Defender' feature installed)
- Essentials, Standard, Datacenter
See also: Managed Antivirus on Windows Server 2012 R2
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