Hello @sociobrightwp,
I hope you’re doing well today!
Although I could not re-produce the same behavior on a test site, this could be sometimes happening due to the server-side caching, for example, the object cache like Memcached.
Could you please try flushing the object cache, if there’s an option in the hosting panel to do that. You can also try re-installing Defender, by deleting it, and installing again. This may sometimes help in case of the aggressive server caching, or in case of corrupt plugin files, etc.
Other possible reasons are PHP errors, and plugin/theme conflicts.
The conflict test means testing it after switching other plugins on/off, and changing the theme as explained here:
https://wpmudev.com/docs/getting-started/getting-support/#conflict-test
Finally, if that still doesn’t help, you can enable debugging, and check if there are any error messages in the debug log, they may help to find the root cause of the issue. Here’s how to enable debugging and debug log by editing wp-config.php file:
https://www.ads-software.com/documentation/article/debugging-in-wordpress/
Let us know if the above steps were helpful.
Best Regards,
Dmytro
