Applies to: Sophos Home for macOS
What's happening:
You may see messages such as “This device is vulnerable” or “Computer is vulnerable” when Sophos Home components are not fully loaded or enabled. These alerts can also appear after you disable a protection setting from the Sophos Home Dashboard, such as Real-Time Protection.
Why It Happens
This issue can occur due to one or more of the following factors:
- Sophos Home System Extensions are not allowed.
- Sophos Home components are not added or enabled in Full Disk Access.
- Mac was migrated, or the installation became corrupted.
- Dashboard settings were modified by the user.
What to do
The first steps are to restart your Mac to allow the new or updated Sophos Home components to load. You'll also want to make sure there is no other antivirus software installed that might be conflicting with Sophos Home. You can check this by reviewing this article.
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If the issue persists after restarting, run a scan to rule out Full Disk Access issues:
- Click on the the Sophos Home Shield on your Menu Bar
- Click on the three dots (...)
- Click on Scan
- If any permissions were missing in Full Disk Access, you will be automatically prompted to re-add them and the message should clear right after.
What to do if the issue persists
1-Enable Sophos Home Extensions
Sophos Home system extensions allow the Antivirus to protect your macOS system. If they are not properly loaded, or if the step to allow them was skipped during installation, your system will not be protected.
Allow the extensions to add them to your Mac-
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Click on the Apple menu
- Scroll down to you find Security
- Ensure "App Store and identified developers" option is selected under "Allow apps downloaded from"
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You will see either "Details..." if more than one extension needs to be allowed, or "Allow"
(Images are illustrative, your Mac might display this differently, but the content will be the same) - Checkmark/click each extension to enable them (checkmarks or sliders will be present)
- Restart your Mac
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Enable the extensions
- Navigate to System Settings > Login Items & Extensions (On macOS Tahoe, select "View by category")
- Locate Endpoint Security Extensions com.sophos.endpoint.scanextension
- Click on the "i" symbol, and enable the slider (Mac's password required)
- Next, locate Network Extensions, networkextension
- Click on the "i" symbol, and enable the slider (Mac's password required)
- Click Allow on the network popup
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Restart your Mac
2-Enable Sophos Home components under Full Disk Access
After the extensions are allowed, you will see a Welcome to Sophos popup to help you enable the Sophos Home components. If this step is skipped, or something goes wrong, you can manually enable the components under Full Disk Access, as listed below:
1-Open System Settings > Privacy & Security > Full Disk Access.
2- Click the + symbol and add the following components from Macintosh HD/ or Macintosh HD/Library/Sophos-AntiVirus :
- Sophos Diagnostic Utility (In the Tools folder)
- SophosScanAgent
- SophosCleanD
- SophosServiceManager
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SophosUpdater * this component can only be found under Macintosh HD/Library/Sophos-Anti Virus/
3 - Restart your Mac and complete the Welcome to Sophos Screen once more if presented.
For additional Full Disk Access troubleshooting see the steps listed here
3-Migrated macOS devices or broken installations
If you migrated your Mac or the installation became corrupted, Sophos Home will not work properly, leaving your system unprotected. The fix is to re-install Sophos Home, follow the Reinstall Sophos Home guide
4-Re-enable Sophos Home Protections
If you disabled Real-Time Protection for troubleshooting, and you see “The real-time protection is disabled”, go to your Sophos Home Dashboard and turn Real-Time Protection back on. Also verify that other protections, such as Web Protection and Malware Protection, are enabled.