Forum Discussion
Will MS Defender protection history clear logs automatically or do I need to manually remove them?
I ran into a false positive with 7-Zip recently—Defender flagged it as a Trojan on September 4, but later scans confirmed it was clean and the install went through without issues.
The problem is, the log entry is still sitting in the Protection history section, and I'm not sure if it'll go away on its own or if I need to do something to remove it. I've seen mixed answers online, so I'd appreciate a clear take on this.
Running Windows 10 Home, 22H2, build 19045.7663 with ESU.
Does Defender eventually clear these logs, or is there a specific step I need to take to get rid of it?
4 Replies
Protection History exists for security auditing purposes, so it doesn't clear immediately after a threat is resolved. Microsoft's official documentation states clearly: "Protection history only keeps events for two weeks, after which they disappear from this page."
According to Microsoft's official documentation, Protection History entries are automatically removed after 15 days by default . Other Microsoft support pages state events are retained for two weeks and then disappear from the list.
Entries are automatically purged after the default retention period (15-30 days). No action needed.
Yes. The Protection history is designed to only retain events for a limited time. According to Microsoft's documentation, entries are automatically removed after two weeks.
