Following the release of Microsoft patches on January 3rd for the Meltdown vulnerability, Symantec have issued guidance that the SEP client can terminate unexpectedly and leave a workstation vulnerable with non-functioning Anti-virus. This issue occurs with all its SEP products from SEP 14 MP1 and earlier and therefore means RMVP 6.6 and earlier are affected. To avoid disruption to teaching and learning and the risk of machines not having functioning anti-virus, RM has paused the release of WSUS updates until 22nd February to enable our customers to take remedial action on RMVP (if you have Trend or have upgraded to RMVP 6.8 see this article to manually enable the download of your January WSUS updates).
What are the options available?
- Our recommended option: Move to Trend Micro
- Upgrade to RMVP 6.8 (now available in your ‘my account’ area on the www.rm.com website)
- Disable automatic approvals in the RMMC (if CC4) before the 22nd February (if you have not performed Option 1 or 2)
Trend Micro:
You may be aware that our recommended security software provider is now Trend Micro and we will no longer be renewing any contracts for Symantec.
As the new Symantec package requires de-installation of the old software and installation of the new package we would highly recommend that you take the opportunity to move to Trend Micro’s endpoint protection now. As we are no longer renewing Symantec licences, an uninstallation of Symantec and installation of Trend Micro will be necessary for you within the next 7 months.
We are offering the opportunity for customers to move to Trend Micro at no additional cost. The replacement Trend Micro solution offers greater depth of protection over our legacy Symantec endpoint protection (also known as RM Virus Protect):
- Gives you additional protection against malware using Trend’s unique behaviour analysis as well as traditional signature based protection
- Includes an anti-spam filter for Exchange, Office 365 or G Suite
To find out more about Trend Micro download our brochure on www.rm.com/trendmicro
For more information on our guidance, please see these TEC articles below:
Main advice on Meltdown/Spectre: https://support.rm.com/TechnicalArticle.asp?cref=TEC6034048
How to tell what version of RMVP you have installed: TEC6066087
Disabling Automatic Approvals for CC4 Network WSUS Updates: TEC6058976