As part of infrastructure enhancements in this release, several high-privileged processes were unified:

In line with Apple’s efforts to improve security in the upcoming macOS 11.0 Big Sur release, which include the deprecation of kernel extensions by 3rd party providers, the Cortex XDR agent 7.1 release is transitioning to fully support the new operating system requirements. Starting already with macOS 10.15.4, the Cortex XDR agent no longer uses the kernel extension. Instead, the agent is designed to deploy a new Network extension and the existing System extension that together provide full coverage of the endpoint traffic, and replace the deprecated kernel extension.

During the transitioning period of both the Cortex XDR agent and the operating system, the Cortex XDR agent does not monitor the network traffic on the endpoint, and cannot report network events back to Cortex XDR. Consequently, the BIOC rules you have for network events will not work, and you will not be able to query about network events in the Query builder. The agent fully supports all other data collection and security capabilities on the endpoint.

For the full installation procedure of the Cortex XDR 7.1 agent release on Mac endpoints running macOS 10.15.4, refer to the Cortex XDR agent administrator guide.

Due to the latest changes in the Cortex XDR agent certificate for Windows, the agent upgrade path from the Endpoint Security Manager (ESM) has changed. To upgrade a Traps agent prior to the 4.2.6 release to a Cortex XDR agent 7.0.0 or later releases, you must perform the following:

If you are using a third party tool to perform your upgrades, you can upgrade a Traps agent prior to the 4.2.6 release directly to any release of the Cortex XDR agent.

Starting with Cortex XDR agent 7.1 release, the kernel modules for Linux endpoints are uploaded dynamically on the endpoint, ensuring the agent retrieves from Cortex XDR only new and updated agent kernels that were specifically compiled for the current distribution and version running on the endpoint.

If no kernel modules are available for the endpoint, then the agent operates in asynchronous mode on the endpoint and reports the corresponding agent operation status back to Cortex XDR.