When do you encounter this? "Only" while the box is booting up? Or even in a desktop session after logging in? Did you ever trace this on a monitor port? Which OS is / are affected?

See if the Registry Key in this KB helps...

https://portal.microfocus.com/s/article/KM000025955?language=en_US

You are my hero ...

What is the difference between the agent versions that this is the solution? (And why the install does not add this Reg.-Key by itself?)

ZESM has something called an application control policy that has an optional feature to block network traffic for a process.  Prior to 23.3, there was an issue where if you were using an application control policy, it could briefly block communications for a new process while it figured out if it was or was not blocked. Multiple checks are done against the process before it is allowed to communicate, but one of the checks takes much longer than all of the others and only adds a very minimal amount of security.  23.3 added a feature that optionally reduced verifying one specific detail around the process to avoid this delay.  Unfortunately, the fix inadvertently caused the delay even when an Application Control Policy was not in place unless the key was set.

--

The hope is that 24.2 will not see this issue by default.  Either the key will be set by default or the code will be fixed so that the checks only take place if you have an application control policy in place.  Then one can choose to set or net set that key depending on how rigorous the checking should be for verifying a process before allowing it to communicate.