And your security team can’t afford the security risks of lagging behind.Ĭurrent recommendation found on the Symantec support page. You need to give your users access to the latest features of Catalina moreover, your users will demand the upgrade. But not upgrading is not viable in the long-term. They’re reaching out to customers with one-to-one communications, trying to convince them not to upgrade to Catalina so they can retain the functionality of their DLP products (for example, reference the table on Symantec’s support page). Most legacy DLP vendors are approaching the kernel crisis carefully. At a time when insider threat continues to escalate, companies simply can’t afford to risk leaving their data exposed. In effect, legacy DLP will cease to work altogether. The products will technically still “ run” on Catalina (with the usual kernel panics and other pains), but they’ll no longer be able to work the way they have - no more blocking risky user actions. But it’s a major problem for legacy DLP products like Symantec and McAfee, which depend on kernel extensions for their core functionality.ĭisallowing kernel extensions disables the blocking functionality of legacy DLP products. This change strengthens the overall security stance of the macOS. Kernel extensions are completely disabled. With the release of Catalina, Apple shifts the entire macOS to read-only, regardless of permissions.

This isn’t just another instance of “kernel panic” - this is a full-blown kernel crisis: Legacy DLP products will cease to work in the Mac environment going forward. But security experts have revealed a troubling impact: macOS Catalina entirely disallows kernel extensions (kexts). Apple released the new macOS Catalina on October 7, setting IT and security teams abuzz about the logistics of upgrading their users, excitement about new features and concerns about the pains that always come with change.

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