Windows Operating System Versions Released After June 14, 2022 but Before November 8, 2022

If the update of the operating system was released after June 14, 2022 but before November 8, 2022, the DCOM hardening is enabled by default.

Proceed as follows to raise the authentication level for all the non-anonymous activation requests from OPC clients to the minimum requested level:

Add the RaiseActivationAuthenticationLevel registry key and set the value to 0x00000002.

The following procedure applies to Desigo CC software starting from version V5.1.

In the Windows search box on the taskbar, enter REGEDIT to open Registry Editor.
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Ole\AppCompat.
Do one of the following:

If the value is not already present, create it (right-click AppCompat and select DWORD (32-bit) Value) and then select RaiseActivationAuthenticationLevel.

To modify the registry key value data, do the following:
a. Right-click RaiseActivationAuthenticationLevel, select Modify.
b. To raise the authentication level for all the OPC clients, enter Value Data = 2 in hexadecimal format.
After setting this registry key, restart the device to apply changes.

For Desigo CC versions older than V5.1, setting the registry keys as indicated in the procedure above—although no specific tests have been done in this regard—no issue should occur in running those older versions. However, if any malfunctioning is detected, it is necessary to update either the Windows operating system or Desigo CC software.
After machine reboot, at the first start of the Desigo CC project, an error might be logged in the Event Viewer, which is related to the communication between WinCC OA OPC driver and the OPC Enum on the remote machine. However, even though the driver is not compromised, if any malfunctioning is detected, it is necessary to update the Windows operating system to the latest security update available.