Attack Surface Reduction (ASR) Rules and Exploit Protection

A guide to narrowing execution and memory-corruption exploit surface using Microsoft Defender's Attack Surface Reduction (ASR) rules, Exploit Protection (EMET successor), Controlled Folder Access, and Network Protection. Covers rule categories and modes, audit-to-block transition, system-wide and per-application exploit mitigations, deployment, and forwarding event logs to SIEM. Significantly raises the cost of Office/script/credential-theft-based attacks.