Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition

The full text of the news alert (which appears on your Partner Management Console):

Posted on 5/19/2016 12:49:02 PM:

To address requests from our partners and customers, Symantec is now offering beta support for Mac OS X El Capitan for the Cloud version of Symantec Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition. This beta support is provided through an unmanaged Mac client using the Norton Security agent, protecting Mac computers with friendly end-user protection. We also plan to release later this year a managed Mac client in an upgraded version of our hosted endpoint service.

Licensing
Customers using the Mac client can use a license from their SEP SBE license total and apply it to the Mac client.

Download
For more information or to download the Mac client, please see the following: http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH234757

Sincerely,

The Symantec Customer Communications Team

<Commentary>

I am unsure of why it was necessary to break this down into two phases ("unmanaged" and "managed"), but I am grateful that after more than two years Symantec has stepped up to the plate with a product enhancement.

The recurring annoyance is that this is being called the "Norton Security agent."  I am selling a SYMANTEC product, one designed for small business use.  I am NOT selling a consumer version, with which Norton is known.  As an MSP, this is aggravating beyond belief!

</Commentary>

Now, on to the information portion of our posting.

Note that for any Macs in your environment that are already running protection software, including SEP, you must first remove it prior to installing Norton for Mac.

Here is some documentation, courtesy of Tech Support, regarding different uninstall methods available for SEP:

• Uninstall Symantec Endpoint Protection for Mac
http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH132120

• Remove Norton for Mac programs using the RemoveSymantecMacFiles utility (this works for all Symantec products for Mac, and is the Mac equivalent of Cleanwipe)
https://support.norton.com/sp/en/us/home/current/solutions/kb20080427024142EN_EndUserProfile_en_us

- No other utilities need to be run after an install.

I plan to upgrade two of my Mac clients from Yosemite to El Capitan next week to get them at the correct OS level.  I'll remove the existing SEP cloud agents, run the wipe, and install the new agents.  I will update this post with my observations.

"Unmanaged" and "beta" ...in 2016.

Unreal. /head desk

Well, after a successful update of two Mac clients to the new OS and after updating their ancillary software, I started the Symantec upgrade.

First, uninstalling the old Symantec Endpoint client.  Support had provided two articles to accomplish that (mentioned previously).  Only one proved useful.  The first referred to finding something in the SEP_MAC folder; I am assuming this was from a full SEP/SEPM environment, because the cloud version doesn't have that folder.  The second referred to downloading a zipped file and running the expanded dlg file.  Unfortunately, the OS intervened with that with the following notice:

What was strange was that I was logged on as the administrator with a non-blank ID. Support eventually sent instructions for how to handle this situation, but that came in later in the day.  In the meanwhile I followed the second set of instructions and used the Terminal to remove the program.  Reboot followed.

After that came the new installation.  It was standard and uneventful.  Open the PMC, select the client to manage and open their Hosted Endpoint page.  Click the Comuters tab and select the new Apple logo'd "Unmanaged Computers" link.  Enter the name of the computer and download the installer.  Click the installer to run and a few minutes later you've got Norton (ahem) installed.  On one machine, I could not get Safari to open the Hosted Endpoint page from the PMC, so I used the send email options.  Screen shot from a Windows machine shown below:

After making sure that Live Update completed, I ran a Quick scan.  Neither Mac had any issues, and for that I was grateful.

Regrettably - and because this is still a beta program - those two machines still do not appear on the PMC.  And there is only the barest evidence of them on the Hosted Endpoint page.

So I have no idea as to their status.  No different than before, but irksome nonetheless in 2016.