Using IT Management Suite to monitor the Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) health status on the client computers

Products

• Inventory Solution
• Client Management Suite
• IT Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

How to use IT Management Suite to monitor the Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) health status on the client computers.

Resolution

Gathering information about Symantec Endpoint Protection health

Step 1. Check if the inventory plug-in is installed on your client computers.
If the Inventory plug-in is installed on the client computers, you can use default inventory policies or tasks to gather SEP agent data.
If the Inventory plug-in is not installed on the client computers, you must use the stand-alone packages to gather SEP agent data.
How to install the Inventory plug-in? 

Step 2. (Optional) Configure the evaluation of SEP agent health according to your requirements.
Configuring SEP Agent Health Evaluation Settings

 

Step 3. Gather the hardware inventory.
On the computers with Inventory plug-ins installed, you can use default inventory policies or tasks to gather data.
Creating and configuring inventory policies and tasks

On the computers without an Inventory plug-in, you can use stand-alone packages to gather data.
Gathering inventory using stand-alone packages

Note: Make sure that in the Advanced Options, on the Data Classes tab, the SEP Agent data class is checked.

 

Viewing the Symantec Endpoint Protection health status

Option 1. You can view SEP agent health on a group of specified client computers on the SEP Agent Health summary flipbook page.

 

Option 2. You can also view information about a single computer on the SEP Agent Health page of the computer details flipbook.
Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) Agent Health page in the Computer Details flipbook

 

The table below explains how the overall health status of a SEP agent is evaluated:

	At least one metric - Healthy	At least one metric - Untracked	At least one metric - Unhealthy
Other metrics Healthy	Healthy	Healthy	Unhealthy
Other metrics Unhealthy	Unhealthy	Unhealthy	Unhealthy
Other metrics Untracked	Healthy	Untracked	Unhealthy

Note: Infection Status, Antivirus Status, Firewall Status, and Last Antivirus Scan information is not collected on Mac client computers and for Mac computer, No data available is displayed for these parameters.

 

Creating a plain text report about SEP agent health details for all computers

Creating a detailed report in the Filter/Target Results Report dialog box
Note: To select SEP-related data into the report, in the Filter Results Report dialog box, under Select Columns for report, type SEP to the search field, and then select required data classes under Installed SEP Agent Details, SEP Agent, or SEP Agent Service Details.

 

Additional information about monitoring the SEP health status

1. SEP Agent Health Evaluation Settings work as follows:
   • If the SEP agent is targeted by more than one SEP Agent Health Evaluation Settings, the Open SEP Agent Health Evaluation Settings icon has an exclamation mark on it. If you hover over the icon, you can see which settings are applied. Ensure that one client computer with SEP agent installed, is not targeted by multiple health evaluation settings. If multiple settings are applied to one computer, the health evaluation is performed based on only one of the settings, even if the settings are disabled.
   • If you turn off the health evaluation settings, the SEP agent health status is Untracked for client computers that are targeted by these settings.
   • When you create new SEP agent health evaluation settings and add a group of computers as a target, those computers are no longer evaluated by the (Default Settings). However, if you turn off the new settings, the target computers, that are added to new settings, are not evaluated by (Default Settings).
2. The SEP Agent Health page in the Computer Details flipbook is not visible in the following situations:
   • The SEP agent is not installed on the client computer.
   • Inventory data may not be gathered due to the following reasons:
     • The inventory policy or task did not run on this client computer yet.
     • The inventory policy or task, that ran on this client computer, is not configured to gather SEP Agent inventory.
   • The client computer has a Linux or UNIX operating system.
3. The Untracked status can appear in the following situations:
   • SEP agent inventory was gathered before the extended health information for the SEP agents feature was introduced in IT Management Suite 8.1 RU6. The status remains Untracked until inventory policy runs on the client computer after the RU6 installation.
   • No SEP agent health evaluation settings are applied for this client computer.
4. Inventory data for Infection Status, Antivirus Status, Firewall Status, and Last Antivirus Scan date is not gathered on Mac client computers.
5. If the data is not gathered for a specific status, a No data available icon (a gray circle with a slash) appears next to the status.
   Also, if the SEP agent does not contain the Firewall component, then the Firewall Status shows No data available.
6. You can start SEP service on computers where it is not running on following pages:
   • For a group of computers on the Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) Agent Health summary page in the summary view flipbook:
     If there are client computers where the SEP service is not running, a Start SEP service on computers where it is not running icon appears next to the status bar. Click the icon to start SEP service on all client computers where it is stopped.
     Note: This task runs immediately on all computers where the SEP agent is installed, but the SEP service is not running.
   • For a single computer on the Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) Agent Health page in the Computer Details flipbook:
     If the SEP service is not running, a Start SEP Service icon appears next to the status. Click the icon to start SEP service on the client computer.
   • On the Jobs/Tasks page, you can create a Control SEP Service State task and manually configure its target.
   •