Applies to: Sophos Home Premium and Free (Mac)
What's happening:
"This device is vulnerable" | "Computer is vulnerable" messages appear when Sophos Home components are not loaded/properly installed.
The most common scenarios in which these messages appear are after a Sophos Home installation/upgrade takes place, or when upgrading your macOS system.
What to do first
The first steps are to restart the Mac to allow it to load the new/updated components, and to ensure there is no additional antivirus software installed that might be conflicting > See this article.
- If the situation persists, run a scan to check the antivirus permissions on your Mac:
- Sophos Home shield >...> Scan
- If permissions were missing, you will be prompted to re-adding them and the message should clear right after.
Depending on the type of message, additional steps can be required. Please see the list below and choose the scenario that applies to your situation (based on what the Shield is displaying).
Troubleshooting Computer is Vulnerable
Ensure no conflicting security software is installed
If you are running multiple security software programs, you may encounter they can conflict with each other. Please remove any other antivirus software while troubleshooting this problem. See: Can I use Sophos Home along other security/antivirus software?
Check if Sophos Home components need to be allowed
This scenario applies mostly to new installations, if you do not see any pending components to be allowed, move on to the next step
- Trigger a Scan by clicking on the Sophos Home Shield > ...> Scan
- If prompted, follow the steps to allow Sophos Home under Full Disk Access
Video Steps
- If no prompt is seen, follow these steps to trigger the System Extensions
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Video steps
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Click on the Apple menu from the taskbar then select System Preferences…OR
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Select Security & Privacy > General OR scroll down until you find Security (Ventura/Sonoma)
NOTE: If using macOS versions before Ventura click on the padlock to make changes - 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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Restart the mac
If no components are pending, the alert will clear 10-15 minutes after restarting the Mac. This ensures all components are re-loaded on the system.
Check your dashboard settings
If protections were manually disabled via Sophos Home dashboard, re-enable them following these steps: The real-time protection is disabled.
OS Specific steps
Action Required messages
Please see Action Required messages for macOS