System and method for protecting a software component running in virtual machine using a virtualization layer

A computing device features one or more hardware processors and a memory that is coupled to the one or more processors. The memory comprises software that supports virtualization, including a virtual machine operating in the guest mode and a virtualization layer operating in the host mode. The virtual machine is configured to execute a plurality of processes including a guest agent process. The virtualization layer is configured to protect the guest agent process operating within the virtual machine that provides metadata to the virtualization layer by restricting page permissions for memory pages associated with the guest agent process when the guest agent process is inactive.