What is the purpose of the Windows registry key "Epoch"

Question

Out of curiosity, what is the purpose of the registry key Epoch:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\services\SharedAccess\Epoch

My security software is warning me about the creation of this entry when running Python code (from IDE PyCharm) to open a file using Qt class QFileDialog:

from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QApplication, QFrame, QMainWindow, QWidget, QFileDialog


class Window(QWidget):

    def __init__(self, parent=None):
        super(Window, self).__init__(parent)
        self.show()
        dialog = QFileDialog(self, "Open File")
        dialog.setAcceptMode(QFileDialog.AcceptOpen)
        dialog.setFileMode(QFileDialog.ExistingFile)
        dialog.exec_()

def main():
    app = QApplication(sys.argv)
    _ = Window()
    status = app.exec_()
    sys.exit(status)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Process Monitor trace:

Answer 1

The Epoch key represents the timestamp that the value was changed. The values within the SharedAccess key represent Windows Firewall preferences. This is why the specific keys are being flagged by your antivirus software.