Product out of date

[offbyone 10]

Since today all of our customers using ESET Antivirus 7.3.2055 have a yellow warning indicator at the system tray symbol. Checking the endpoints we see a "Security out of date" warning that the version will be EoL at 31.12.2023.

Why is this message shown at the endpoint even if we had disabled "Show Product outdated" in "Application Statuses" from policy?

Why is the message shown 13 month in advance of EoL.

Currently we have to handle a huge amount of help desk calls for customers asking because of security concerns.

 

Thanks for help.

Regards

[Wyatt P 2]

Unfortunately you cannot disable EOL alerts. If you upgrade the product to a newer version (or latest) it will clear the alert. 7.3.x is quite old and is entering Limited support status after Dec. 31.

If you view the product support tables, you can see that the version 8.0.x has already been placed into EOL status.

https://support-eol.eset.com/en/policy_business/product_tables.html

[offbyone 10]

Quote

Unfortunately you cannot disable EOL alerts. If you upgrade the product to a newer version (or latest) it will clear the alert. 7.3.x is quite old and is entering Limited support status after Dec. 31.

Can you give a hint where it is stated that EoL alerts cannot be disabled on the GUI?

EoL date is reached in13 month so it is questionable to show this message that early at least in the end user GUI.

IMHO it is good advice to let administrators decide how to handle such situations for enterprise products and not force them by vendor. To unsettle end users by showing such messages does only harm.

Cheers

[Wyatt P 2]

27 minutes ago, offbyone said:

Can you give a hint where it is stated that EoL alerts cannot be disabled on the GUI?

EoL date is reached in13 month so it is questionable to show this message that early at least in the end user GUI.

IMHO it is good advice to let administrators decide how to handle such situations for enterprise products and not force them by vendor. To unsettle end users by showing such messages does only harm.

Cheers

Sure, it is noted here by Marcos on this thread.

 

[Ryan Dey 6]

At Wyatt's suggestion, I have posted a feature request in this thread: 

 

It's not showing there yet due to content moderation policies, but should show up soon. on page 4.

[offbyone 10]

Quote

Sure, it is noted here by Marcos on this thread.

Thanks for pointing out.

I would understand this if the product would be EoL, but it's 13 month before?

We have designed our timelines to upgrade endpoints before EoL but not 13 month in advance of EoL. Upgrading more than 1.000 endpoints has to be done carefully with intensive testing.

IMHO a product should be usable until EoL is reached. I would consider an enterprise security product which is nagging end users every day not being usable at all any longer.

Cheers

[itman 1,659]

6 hours ago, offbyone said:

Why is the message shown 13 month in advance of EoL.

I would say this is a bug on Eset's part. It appears the upcoming Limited Support status on 12/31/2022 is being interpreted as EOL.

I would open a support ticket on it.

Edited December 1, 2022 by itman

[offbyone 10]

@Ryan DeyTHX for posting a feature request.

[Wyatt P 2]

20 hours ago, itman said:

I would say this is a bug on Eset's part. It appears the upcoming Limited Support status on 12/31/2022 is being interpreted as EOL.

I would open a support ticket on it.

The alert is stating 12/31/2023 for EOL which is accurate. The product version moves into limited support on 12/31/2022. I do not believe this to be a bug, the product version is quite old and my personal recommendation would be to always be running either the latest or a newer version of any AV software.

[offbyone 10]

Quote

my personal recommendation would be to always be running either the latest or a newer version of any AV software.

This is OK as a personal preference.

But keep in mind that there are other companies which have different demands. On large Enterprises with lots of clients and mission critical systems, rolling out new versions take much of human resources and time.

So if you have a very stable and reliable software running, and 7.3.2055 is as such, it can be good advice to run that version until EoL and use the free human IT resources to push other IT projects where situation is different.

At the end it is good advice to let the customers decide and not force them to cut off a software version 13 month before EoL.

[Wyatt P 2]

8 minutes ago, offbyone said:

This is OK as a personal preference.

But keep in mind that there are other companies which have different demands. On large Enterprises with lots of clients and mission critical systems, rolling out new versions take much of human resources and time.

So if you have a very stable and reliable software running, and 7.3.2055 is as such, it can be good advice to run that version until EoL and use the free human IT resources to push other IT projects where situation is different.

At the end it is good advice to let the customers decide and not force them to cut off a software version 13 month before EoL.

I totally understand your points and I agree. It would be nice if the alert could be suppressible and maybe based on customer feedback, they may change this.

At this moment of the post, the only solution would be to upgrade to a newer version. But it is not bug-like behavior, it is by design it seems, due to the dates on the alert being correct.

[itman 1,659]

On 12/1/2022 at 9:12 AM, offbyone said:

Since today all of our customers using ESET Antivirus 7.3.2055 have a yellow warning indicator at the system tray symbol. Checking the endpoints we see a "Security out of date"

The difference between Eset EOL and product update notifications is explained here: https://support-eol.eset.com/en/trending_eol_products.html .

EOL notification is show in red. Product upgrade notification is shown in orange. I agree 100% that there should be a way to disable product upgrade notifications; at least on managed endpoint installations. Displaying the upgrade notification on the Eset console would be sufficient.

Edited December 2, 2022 by itman

[tbsky 11]

On 12/3/2022 at 3:28 AM, itman said:

The difference between Eset EOL and product update notifications is explained here: https://support-eol.eset.com/en/trending_eol_products.html .

EOL notification is show in red. Product upgrade notification is shown in orange. I agree 100% that there should be a way to disable product upgrade notifications; at least on managed endpoint installations. Displaying the upgrade notification on the Eset console would be sufficient.

Yes please make an option so EOL only shows to Administrator. it is really a bad idea to disturb end users when they are managed. 

[ASW_Lic 1]

For those of you affected by this problem I have found that you need to programmatically disable the "Get notifications from these senders" by editing the wpndatabase.db on everyone's computer. Here is a basic PowerShell snippet of how I accomplished this:

$connString = ("Data Source='" + "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Microsoft\Windows\Notifications\wpndatabase.db'")
$con = New-Object -TypeName System.Data.SQLite.SQLiteConnection
$con.ConnectionString = $connString
$con.Open()
$cmd = $con.CreateCommand()
$cmd.CommandTimeout = 10
$cmd.CommandText = "UPDATE [HandlerSettings]
SET [Value] = 0
WHERE [HandlerSettings].[SettingKey] LIKE 's:toast'
AND [HandlerSettings].[HandlerId] IN (
SELECT HS.[HandlerId]
FROM [HandlerSettings] AS HS
INNER JOIN [NotificationHandler] AS NH ON NH.[RecordId] = HS.[HandlerId]
WHERE HS.[SettingKey] LIKE 's:toast' AND NH.[PrimaryId] LIKE 'Microsoft.Explorer.Notification%'
)"
[void]$cmd.ExecuteNonQuery()
$con.Close()

This is probably bad code but I am a systems administrator not a programmer. Systems administrators are responsible for their infrastructure and we do not need to be dictated by people complaining about a yellow popup describing something that will happen over a year from now. Every environment is different and it's a shame ESET doesn't realize this.

[Marcos 5,074]

Please kindly do not deactivate the notifications or you won't probably reactivate them later and missing some important notifications in the future may lead to issues if our message cannot be delivered. We are working on a solution when managed Endpoint won't display the notification in gui. It may take a couple of days and we expect it to be released next week.

[Trooper 65]

On 12/5/2022 at 10:23 AM, Marcos said:

Please kindly do not deactivate the notifications or you won't probably reactivate them later and missing some important notifications in the future may lead to issues if our message cannot be delivered. We are working on a solution when managed Endpoint won't display the notification in gui. It may take a couple of days and we expect it to be released next week.

Any updates on this at all Marcos?  I have a one Windows 7 box and some legacy 2008 R2 Servers at my company displaying the yellow EOL alerts in the cloud instance.  Thanks!

[offbyone 10]

Quote

Any updates on this at all Marcos? 

Here the alerts have gone.

Seems that ESET fixed the issue "online" without the need to deploy anything. We use on prem management.

[Trooper 65]

2 minutes ago, offbyone said:

Here the alerts have gone.

Seems that ESET fixed the issue "online" without the need to deploy anything. We use on prem management.

Wow really?  I am still seeing alerts in my cloud console.  🤔

[offbyone 10]

Quote

Wow really?  I am still seeing alerts in my cloud console.  🤔

From what I understood the alert was removed from the client side, but not from the management console, which makes sense IMHO.

Edited December 12, 2022 by offbyone

[Trooper 65]

17 minutes ago, offbyone said:

From what I understood the alert was removed from the client side, but not from the management console, which makes sense IMHO.

I have notifs disabled on endpoints.  I just do not want to see them in the console.

[Marcos 5,074]

6 minutes ago, Trooper said:

I have notifs disabled on endpoints.  I just do not want to see them in the console.

This is not possible, the notifications will appear in the console.

[offbyone 10]

Just verified.

The warnings are still visible in the console but disappeared at the client side.

Edited December 12, 2022 by offbyone

[Trooper 65]

Thanks for the confirmation @Marcosand @offbyone