Sophos on 10.6

[Arcath]

Im trying to deploy sophos from enterprise console to a couple of macs in school and i cant even get enterprise console to see them, its picked up every piece of hardware in the school (printers, NAS boxes etc...) but not the macs.

 

Anyone know how to get EC to pick them up?

[AntonioRocco]

Hi

 

AFAIK in previous versions you could not do this using the Enterprise Console. You have to go round and install the package either singly or if it's in .pkg or .mpkg format via ARD - assuming you have it? Once installed you should be able to 'see' the macs as well as do anything else Sophos related.

 

Another way of tackling this is to take one mac workstation, install the package, prepare the workstation for imaging, create an nbi and then 'push' that image to the rest. Re-configure all the macs afterwards for your environment. You might be best advised to wait until an appropriate School Break? You would need OSX Server for this or if you have it DeployStudio.

 

I guess it's kind of OK to install A/V software on macs but I have to ask why? Surely if PC workstations and Servers have it installed, configured and up-to-date what would be the point?

 

Antonio Rocco (ACSA)

[jamesreedersmith]

To protect against Mac viruses!!!

[dirtydog]

Ive just upgraded our enterprise console but haven't tried installing on 10.6 yet. I imagine the easiest way will be how I did it on 10.5. Connect to a share with the setup file and COPY it to the mac, then run and install it as normal.

[AntonioRocco]

Hi

 

@Jamesreedersmith

 

"To protect against Mac viruses!!!"

 

I'm intrigued!!!! Which Mac viruses would these be????

 

Antonio Rocco (ACSA)

[jamesreedersmith]

Hi

 

@Jamesreedersmith

 

"To protect against Mac viruses!!!"

 

I'm intrigued!!!! Which Mac viruses would these be????

 

Antonio Rocco (ACSA)

 

http://antivirus.about.com/od/macintoshresource/tp/macvirusfaqs.htm

 

and if you are naïve to believe there are no real viruses for macs you are deluded I've seen a site crippled bcause someone held that belief and had no protection on the macs but on everything else - it was a design house and they nearly went out of business because of it

 

thanks

 

james

[AntonioRocco]

Hi

 

Perhaps the naivety is yours?

 

Your story is not really relevant as far as I can see? How long ago was it? Where you actually there or was this passed onto you second-hand? If that's the case how do you really know what happened? If a company is structured in such a way that they nearly go out of business because something like this happened then their problems go far deeper than not installing AV software. It takes nothing to purchase/hire another computer to keep things going whilst the others are being fixed. Any competent engineer would have had it sorted within 3-4 hours. Seriously this 'story' is so full of holes it's useless as an example.

 

If we're truly talking about 'Viruses' and what most people would mean by a 'Virus' then there are none for the mac in the wild. There have been some 'created' programs that have appeared to have 'Virus' like abilities in the lab. Even if there happened to be a virus appear tomorrow how are students going to install it anyway? Anything Virus-like would need the express permission of root to install into BSD. To get that you'd have to go through the local admin account first. Even then it would only 'infect' the local mac. It's difficult to see how it could 'leap' across a network without sitting down at all the others, logging in as the local admin and invoking sudo to install it.

 

Why would you do that anyway? More importantly how would students be able to do that? Unless you gave them the local admin's name and password beforehand? Perhaps you've probably stopped 'listening' by now anyway but FWIW my advice to you would be to stop approaching macs as if they were PCs, stop quoting the drivel that passes for information from websites that should know better and go and learn how the platform actually works.

 

But you do have a point - sort of? Other forms of Malware can be something else. AFAIK apart from DNSChanger and some osascript scares - which turned out to be scaremongering rather than a true scare - there has been precious little else that actually causes major problems to the platform itself or to other platforms by transferring across.

 

Once you take a balanced view of exactly what a Virus means you can then look at the 'opinions' Kaspersky, MacAfee and the rest have and approach it accordingly. They are trying to make money after all. Usually from the gullible and the ill-informed. IMHO all you need really do is make sure the PCs are covered.

 

Clearly you can decide to dismiss all of this and do what you want. It's not going to make much difference either way. The delusion is all yours and you can nourish and cherish it as much as you like. Although to me it seems you have more money and time on your hands than sense?

 

Antonio Rocco (ACSA)

Edited January 30, 2010 by AntonioRocco

[Arcath]

When i run the .mpkg it says that sophos cant be installed on this machine, and its not saying why, just that it wont.

 

under county rules any machine connected to the schools internet needs to have anti virus, and they provide sophos for that. Im not going to breach those rules just because the head didnt buy any av for them because hes one of the poor misguided apple fans that believes there are no viruses for macs.

[AntonioRocco]

Arcath

 

By all means install Sophos for the reasons you've said and any other reason you can think of or are contractually obligated to do. But you're not installing it to prevent viruses from infecting the Mac platform. All you're really doing is providing an extra layer of protection for the Windows platform.

 

This is probably the best reason for installing it anyway.

 

FYI I'm neither a fan or an apologist. If the Sophos package is not installing then either you've got the wrong one or you're doing something wrong.

 

Antonio Rocco (ACSA)

[Arcath]

Are there any dependacies to the sophos package? possibly some librarys that i need to install.