How-To: Sophos ‘Full Disk Access’ Fix for Ventura Upgrade

Credit: Sophos

Applies to Sophos Home for macOS when running macOS Ventura 

What is happening

We have been working with Apple for several months on support for Ventura, testing the beta builds and providing feedback to Apple. 

After testing the Release Candidate that went live on October 20, there are some issues we want to make you aware of in case Apple does not fix them before officially releasing macOS Ventura to all users (expected October 24).

Main Known Issue

When upgrading to macOS Ventura, Sophos Home will report healthy (green) but the Scan extension will not have full disk access until manually re-added. This is due to an Apple permissions issue when upgrading to macOS Ventura. Our team is working on finding a workaround should Apple not resolve the problem on their end soon.

If you upgrade to macOS Ventura while Sophos Home (10.4.0) is installed,  or if you re-install Sophos Home on Ventura post upgrading to it, you will need do the following to re-enable the antivirus protection:

  • Click on the Apple logo > System Settings
  • Click Privacy & Security > Full Disk Access
  • Click com.sophos.endpoint.scanextension and use the “- ” sign to remove it
  • Wait for com.sophos.endpoint.scanextension to reappear
  • Click on the slider next to com.sophos.endpoint.scanextension to switch it to the blue position

Video steps:

Note: This will not happen if you install Sophos Home FOR THE FIRST TIME after upgrading to macOS Ventura. However, existing installations, including re-installations will be affected. This is due to an issue with macOS Ventura not properly allowing Full Disk Access configurations from previous installations, and we have filed a bug with Apple, currently waiting on their input.

Other Known Issues

There are a few other minor issues with macOS Ventura, noted below.

  • After updating to macOS Ventura, you will need to reboot – a second time – for the Sophos Network Extension to be enabled
  • Our Transparent Proxy is not working on virtual machines. It is fine on real hardware, but there is no web protection or web control on virtual machines with the current release candidate version of Ventura
  • In System Settings, there is a network panel that attempts to allow the user to change the filter state or remove them altogether. The interface is functional but does not affect the Sophos Content Filter or Transparent Proxy – Any changes users make in there will not affect their protection, as they will automatically revert.