SEC 5.2.1 and Sophos for MAC OS X Preview (9.0.3)

With the demise of SUM (bad, bad decision), I am following the instructions in http://www.sophos.com/en-us/support/knowledgebase/119744.aspxto create a standalone installer with built-in updating credentials, I am confident that will work as far as it goes.

As others have commented here, it does not (yet) allow setting other settings such as don't/do scan network volumes, zips, etc. It would seem the easiest solution to achieve this would be if Sophos allowed using the defaults write command to customise various plist stored settings on the client. This in fact may well already be possible but Sophos should provide some documentation and examples for this if so. There are plenty of Mac management tools to allow managing plist stored settings on clients some of which are free (or almost so), so this approach would be a good compromise.

However what Sophos should have done a long time ago, is make their Sophos Enterprise Console platform independent. There is absolutely no need for it to be tied solely to (ugh!) Windows Servers. After all you provide clients for all the major operating systems. If it had been written as a web-app with an open-source database backend e.g. MySQL then it would be easy to run on Linux, Unix, or of course Mac OS X. It probably would have even been easier and cheaper to maintain on Windows both for Sophos themselves and their clients.

I would still prefer at a minimum an updated Sophos Update Manager for Mac (if Sophos will not make Sophos Enterprise Console platform independent). Sophos Cloud does not do what I want even if it eventually turns out to be free which is not yet clear, it looks like an extra cost which is therefore penalising your non-Windows customers. If there is no replacement for SUM then I shall at least be looking for a replacement for Sophos which has a Mac tool like SUM, whether I will find one and eventually drop Sophos is at this point unknown.

Note: You are making life much harder for non-Windows server customers. Even though it is possible to pre-configure your SAV9 installer (as per the above article), this installer is an 'Application' it is not an installer package, therefore deploying it is not a straight forward process of using a Mac management tool to deploy and run the installer since these tools either expect a package (to run), or an Application which simply gets copied to the Applications folder. We have enough of this hassle with Adobe and even they have seen the error of their ways and produced a tool for making package installers for Enterprise customers. The silly thing is that for a copy of SAV managed by SUM or Enterprise Console you do give a package file, it is the standalone installer (or the home edition which is not relevant) that is the exception. :smileymad:

With the demise of SUM (bad, bad decision), I am following the instructions in http://www.sophos.com/en-us/support/knowledgebase/119744.aspxto create a standalone installer with built-in updating credentials, I am confident that will work as far as it goes.

As others have commented here, it does not (yet) allow setting other settings such as don't/do scan network volumes, zips, etc. It would seem the easiest solution to achieve this would be if Sophos allowed using the defaults write command to customise various plist stored settings on the client. This in fact may well already be possible but Sophos should provide some documentation and examples for this if so. There are plenty of Mac management tools to allow managing plist stored settings on clients some of which are free (or almost so), so this approach would be a good compromise.

However what Sophos should have done a long time ago, is make their Sophos Enterprise Console platform independent. There is absolutely no need for it to be tied solely to (ugh!) Windows Servers. After all you provide clients for all the major operating systems. If it had been written as a web-app with an open-source database backend e.g. MySQL then it would be easy to run on Linux, Unix, or of course Mac OS X. It probably would have even been easier and cheaper to maintain on Windows both for Sophos themselves and their clients.

I would still prefer at a minimum an updated Sophos Update Manager for Mac (if Sophos will not make Sophos Enterprise Console platform independent). Sophos Cloud does not do what I want even if it eventually turns out to be free which is not yet clear, it looks like an extra cost which is therefore penalising your non-Windows customers. If there is no replacement for SUM then I shall at least be looking for a replacement for Sophos which has a Mac tool like SUM, whether I will find one and eventually drop Sophos is at this point unknown.

Note: You are making life much harder for non-Windows server customers. Even though it is possible to pre-configure your SAV9 installer (as per the above article), this installer is an 'Application' it is not an installer package, therefore deploying it is not a straight forward process of using a Mac management tool to deploy and run the installer since these tools either expect a package (to run), or an Application which simply gets copied to the Applications folder. We have enough of this hassle with Adobe and even they have seen the error of their ways and produced a tool for making package installers for Enterprise customers. The silly thing is that for a copy of SAV managed by SUM or Enterprise Console you do give a package file, it is the standalone installer (or the home edition which is not relevant) that is the exception. :smileymad: