About Accelerated Heartbeat in Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) Clients.

Products

• Endpoint Protection

Issue/Introduction

What is "Accelerated Heartbeat"? Why will it occur on SEP clients?

Resolution

The SEP client heartbeat interval is normally controlled by communications policies set at the Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager (SEPM). In certain situations, the SEP client will decrease its heartbeat interval to a value between 0 and 60 seconds. The purpose of this accelerated heartbeat is to ensure that critical updates and content are delivered to clients in as timely a manner as possible. Once the client is able to download the content update or package requested, the client will then re-apply the heartbeat interval configured at the SEPM level. It is not possible to configure clients' Accelerated Heartbeat intervals.

The SEP client can enter an accelerated heartbeat period for several reasons:

1. While waiting for content to be prepared by the SEPM for download
2. When the client's configuration has changed
3. When the client has resumed from hibernation
4. After the SEP client's profile is updated
5. After an Internet exception occurs while trying to get an updated index2.xml file from the SEPM