McAfee Agent Flashcards
How does the McAfee Agent fit into the ePO architecture?
It’s the client side component that provides secure communication between ePO and managed products
What are the primary functions that are carried out by the McAfee Agent?
- Installs products and their upgrades on managed systems
- Updates security content such as the V3 DAT files or AMCore Content Package associated with ENS
- Enforces policies and schedules tasks on managed systems
- Gathers information and events from managed systems, and sends them to McAfee ePO
When managing a larger network, how many superagents should be configured?
One in every subnet
Give a high level description of the added functionality that a SuperAgent provides
Acts as an intermediary between the ePO server and other agents in the same network broadcast segment by caching information received from ePO, the master repository, or a mirror distributed repository and distributes it to agents in its network subnet
The Agent is based on what type of architecture? Why is it advantageous?
It’s based on services (messaging) architecture. In messaging-based architecture, the services communicate using a common language, reducing the use of system resources such as number of threads, number of handles, memory, and cpu
What is the Agent’s manifest based policy?
Fetches only the changed policy settings from ePO, using fewer resources for comparing or merging settings.
ePO doesn’t have to compute the changed policy at each agent-server communication, helping to save network bandwidth
Does Agent 5.6.X require multiple TCP connections during a single agent-server communication?
No, previous versions did, requiring more network bandwidth. 5.6.X uses the same TCP connection when performing an agent-server communication
How is the McAfee Agent able to track system events on the client system?
Via sensor services:
User sensors - Detects the logged on users on the client system using operating system APIs and apply the user-based policies accordingly
Network sensors - Detects the network connectivity status using operating system network APIs and determines if the agent functionality such as pulling updates from the repository or communicating to ePO should be performed
How does priority event forwarding work?
Makes it so that events that reach a certain severity threshold are forwarded to the ePO server with greater priority
Deselect “Retrieve all system and product properties (recommended)”.
If unchecked retrieve only a subset of properties. What does it retrieve?
System properties and minimal product properties.
How does agent-server communication work?
During each agent-server communication, McAfee Agent collects its _________ _________ _________, as well as events that have not yet been sent, and sends them to the ______. The server sends new or changed policies and tasks to the _______ _______, and the repository list if it has changed since the last agent-server communication. McAfee Agent enforces the new -________ locally on the managed system and applies any task or repository changes.
current system properties
server
McAfee Agent
policies
How long does it take the Agent to call into the server after it is initially installed?
45 seconds
What events trigger the McAfee agent to call in to the ePO server?
- The agent-server communication interval (ASCI) elapses.
- Wake-up calls are sent from McAfee ePO or Agent Handlers.
- A scheduled wake-up task runs on the client systems.
- Communication is initiated manually from the managed system (using the Agent Status monitor or command line).
- A “Run Immediately” client task runs on the client systems.
What factors can cause the cumulative demand on the network, ePO, or the Agent Handler to be significant?
- Number of systems managed by McAfee ePO
- If your organization has stringent threat response requirements
- If the network or physical location of clients in relation to servers or Agent Handlers is highly distributed
- If there is inadequate available bandwidth
if your environment has a high number of systems managed by ePO, if your organization has stringent threat response requirements, if the network or physical location of clients in relation to server or Agent Handlers is highly distributed, or if there is inadequate available bandwidth, should you do more or less frequent agent server communications?
At the organization level, less frequent. However, for individual clients that perform critical functions, you might want to set a more frequent interval
What are the methods that the McAfee Agent tries to use to establish communication?
- IP Address
- FQDN
- NetBIOS name
- Relay
- Proxy
What happens if the Agent exhausts all of the various connection methods and still fails to establish a connection?
The McAfee Agent will try to connect again during the next ASCI
What does a wake up call do?
Triggers an immediate ASC rather than waiting for the current interval to elapse
What are the two ways to issue a wake up call?
Manually from the server - (Requires an open wake-up communication port)
On a schedule set by the administrator
What are some possible reasons for issuing a wakeup call?
- Making a policy change that you want to enforce immediately, without waiting for the scheduled ASCI
- (ePO On-Premises)You create a task that you want to run immediately. The Run Task Now option creats a task, then assigns it to specififed client systems and sends wake-up calls
- A query generated a report indicating that a client is out of compliance, and you want to test its status as part of a troubleshooting procedure
What is a SuperAgent?
A distributed repository which is designed to reduce the load on the ePO server
Other than acting as a Distributed Repository, what can a SuperAgent do?
Broadcast wake-up calls to other agents on the same network subnet. The SuperAgent receives a wake-up call from ePO, then wakes up the agents in its subnet
What types of systems are best suited to host SuperAgents?
Servers (or systems that are always on)
What is the process of a SuperAgent wake-up call?
Server sends a wake-up call to all SuperAgents
SuperAgents broadcast a wake-up call to McAfee Agent in the same broadcast domain
All notified McAfee Agent (McAfee Agent notified by a SuperAgent and all SuperAgents) exchange data with McAfee ePO or Agent Handler
How does LazyCaching work
Allows the SuperAgent to retrieve data from the configured repositories only when requested by a local agent.
When a client system first requests content, the SuperAgent assigned to that system downloads the request content from its configured repositories and caches that content
The cache is updated when a newer version of the requested package is available in the Master Repository.
How are communication interruptions involving superagents handled?
When a SuperAgent receives a request for content that might be outdated, the SuperAgent tries to contact McAfee ePO to see if new content is available.
If the connection tries time out, the SuperAgent distributes content from its own repository instead. This content transfer is done to make sure that the requester receives content even if that content might be outdated