Applies to Sophos Home for macOS
What's happening
Sophos Home feature for macOS "Privacy Guard" , or privGuard, was removed from the product on September 2023. Sophos Home macOS 10.5.0 release notes
Why is this changing?
Cybersecurity is highly adversarial and fast-moving in a way that few other industries are. To ensure Sophos Home customers remain protected in a changing threat landscape, Sophos has included additional protection capabilities to the Sophos Home product over time.
Sophos Home customers now benefit from the same protection capabilities as Sophos' business products. To streamline the capabilities of both product families, Sophos has decided to remove the Privacy Guard functionality from the macOS version of Sophos Home.
What should I do?
No action is required for macOS users. Windows users are not impacted.
The antivirus has been updated to include new capabilities behind the scenes that match those of our business product. Privacy Guard features were removed during that time.
Some users may still see the PRIVACY tab on macOS systems in the Sophos Home Dashboard. That tab can be safely ignored. We will be removing it in the future.
How do I keep my webcam and microphone protected?
Sophos Home protects your mac from malware attacks and will intercept and stop any programs or files that present malware behavior. However, if you would like to further control your mac's access to camera and microphone, please see these articles from Apple:
Control access to the microphone on Mac
Control access to the camera on Mac