Please be advised that effective 7th Dec 2016 Symantec will no longer provide support or connectivity to Smart Connect agents v1.5.x and older. This is our third and final notice to Customers and Partners of this mandatory upgrade. Customer/Partners are advised that failure to upgrade to the latest version of Smart Connect will result in loss of protection.
Customers/Partners must upgrade to the latest version of Smart Connect which is compatible with Windows 8 and Windows 10 Operating Systems. The latest version of Smart Connect includes Symantec’s Live Update technology which allows the agent to receive automatic updates.
Why is Symantec doing this?
Symantec constantly improves the security of our products and services. This mandatory upgrade is necessary since the certificates on our Web Security.cloud authentication servers will be increased to the latest security standard of 2048 bits. Smart Connect agents v1.5.x and older will no longer be capable of authenticating to our service after the cutoff date. Symantec is constantly updating and upgrading our service offerings and in most cases this can be achieved without having to enforce a change on our customers. However, in this instance the security upgrade necessitates a mandatory upgrade of the client as well.
Please be assured that this work, and the need to enforce a new version of the agent, is necessary to provide higher levels of protection within the service.
What will happen if I don’t upgrade the Smart Connect agent?
After 7th December 2016, users of Smart Connect agents v1.5.x and older will still have connectivity to the internet, however they will not be protected by Symantec’s AV, Anti-Malware and will not be subject to the customer’s URL filtering policies.
Recommendation:
To ensure that the web traffic from Smart Connect users continues to be inspected by our Web Security.cloud service, please download and install the latest version of Smart Connect prior to 7th Dec 2016.
Symantec acknowledges and understands the potential disruption upgrading causes, and we apologize for any inconvenience caused by this change. Our Support and Technical Sales Teams have been briefed on the changes and are available for assistance if required.
Please refer to Technical Article INFO3997 for full upgrade instructions.