diff --git a/salt/salt/master.defaults.yaml b/salt/salt/master.defaults.yaml
index 5b989b295..97e29d0a8 100644
--- a/salt/salt/master.defaults.yaml
+++ b/salt/salt/master.defaults.yaml
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
 # version cannot be used elsewhere in this pillar as soup is grepping for it to determine if Salt needs to be patched
 salt:
   master:
-    version: 3006.10
+    version: '3006.10'
diff --git a/salt/salt/minion.defaults.yaml b/salt/salt/minion.defaults.yaml
index e56bf02c0..d3cb54692 100644
--- a/salt/salt/minion.defaults.yaml
+++ b/salt/salt/minion.defaults.yaml
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 # version cannot be used elsewhere in this pillar as soup is grepping for it to determine if Salt needs to be patched
 salt:
   minion:
-    version: 3006.10
+    version: '3006.10'
     check_threshold: 3600 # in seconds, threshold used for so-salt-minion-check. any value less than 600 seconds may cause a lot of salt-minion restarts since the job to touch the file occurs every 5-8 minutes by default
     service_start_delay: 30 # in seconds.