This discussion has been locked.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

MacOS Sonoma 14.0 slowness, CPU loading and battery depletion

We've started to use Sophos Intercept X on Macbooks.

Since Sophos has been running on our Macbooks, I've noticed that the computer regularly becomes sluggish and sometimes unresponsive. What's more, in mobile mode, the battery only lasts for an hour before I have to put the computer on the charger. Agreed, Sophos isn't the only culprit; other applications such as Firefox and Outlook are also processor, memory and energy-hungry. But Sophos still has a significant impact on work.

A quick glance at the activity monitor shows me that the 25 Sophos processes are using 340% of the available CPU capacity this morning. This varies a little over the course of the day, but is still quite high.

The system is equipped with a 4-core i5 processor with hyperthreading (Macbook 2020), for a total of 8 cores. Running Sophos therefore takes up 42.5% of the processor's available performance. The processor fan is activated very often, which wasn't the case before.

And because Sophos is so active all the time, the battery capacity runs out very quickly. This isn't very practical when you're on the move. The oval shows work last night between 9pm and 10pm, I was configuring an IPsec connection on a client's firewall, so nothing demanding.

Any remarks or advice?

Kind regards,

Jaap



This thread was automatically locked due to age.
Parents
  • Hi Jaap,

    Like you, we've experienced the same issues with InterceptX, both on PC and Mac. Our Intel Macs with light load were dying in an hour with IntereceptX, and since removing it are hitting 2-3 hours with the same workload. Same thing, fans spinning, top of the keyboard quite warm, and CPU going nuts, especially in the morning with the computers coming out of sleep or fresh boot.

    The ARM Macs weren't as affected, but still had higher battery draw over the day.

    Our solution was to remove InterceptX from all our computers, as it caused too much overhead for its use. When a i7 12th gen processor feels like a 2013 i3, there's a problem.

  • I regret to hear your performance issues have been so severe that you've had to remove Sophos from some your devices. May I ask if you've reached out to Sophos Support, or your Account Manager/Sales Engineer to see if any policy or exclusion adjustments can be made to improve the performance you've been seeing? 

    Kushal Lakhan
    Team Lead, Global Community Support
    Connect with Sophos Support, get alerted, and be informed.
    If a post solves your question, please use the "Verify Answer" button.
    The New Home of Sophos Support Videos!  Visit Sophos Techvids
  • We had, but were still disappointed by the level of detail the threat analysis provided and huge bursts in CPU usage, and have since switched to Sentinel One for our advanced threat analytics.

  • We have the same problem... Any solution?

Reply Children
No Data