WDAC Policy Not Enforced After Deployment to EFI Partition on Windows 10 Enterprise 21H2

Hi Microsoft Team,

We are working on automating the deployment of a Windows Defender Application Control (WDAC) policy on Windows 10 Enterprise, Version 21H2.

Our deployment process is as follows:

• We mount the EFI System Partition using:

    mountvol S: /S
  

  We copy the compiled WDAC policy (.cip) to:

    S:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\CiPolicies\Active
  

  We verify that the policy is successfully copied to the destination. We then reboot the system (or attempt to use the RefreshPolicy utility if available).

The policy file is present in the EFI partition. However, after rebooting, the WDAC policy is not enforced.

We would like to confirm the following:

Is S:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\CiPolicies\Active (where S: is the mounted EFI System Partition) the correct and supported location for deploying WDAC policies on Windows 10 Enterprise Version 21H2?

Does Windows 10 Enterprise Version 21H2 automatically load WDAC policies from this EFI directory during boot?

Is the CiPolicies\Active directory expected to exist by default, or is it supported to create it manually if it is missing?

Are there any additional boot configuration, registry settings, BCD settings, or prerequisites required before Windows will load a policy from this location?

Does the policy need to be signed before it can be loaded from the EFI partition, or are unsigned policies supported in this deployment scenario?

Is copying the .cip file into the EFI partition the recommended deployment method for this Windows version, or is another deployment mechanism preferred?

Which Event Viewer logs and Event IDs should we review to determine whether Windows attempted to load the policy or rejected it during boot?

Are there any known limitations or changes in Windows 10 Enterprise Version 21H2 regarding EFI-based WDAC policy deployment?

Our goal is to confirm that we are deploying the policy to the correct EFI location and following the supported deployment method before we investigate the policy itself.

Thank you for your guidance.