I have a handful of users on Mobile Protection, only two of whom have an iOS device. In the portal, the iOS devices go amber and report "WebRoot iOS agent is not running". The app on the phone, however, reports the phone is protected and all is okay.
According to WebRoot support, after a period of time, iOS will stop the app from communicating, presumably for performance or battery life considerations. Even then, the app appears to be running normally on the phone.
Also according to WebRoot support, when the agent is not reporting into the portal, the Scream and Location features are not available, though the other features are (Lock, Wipe, Password).
The suggested remedy is to have users open the app daily, or restart the phone daily, to keep the app communicating. I view this solution as lacking, and wonder about the opinion of other WebRoot Business users on the iOS Mobile Protection agent.
My clients are business owners with a lot on their plate. I am paid to provide a service so that they don't have to concern themselves with it. The location service is a primary reason for running this app, in the event of a lost or stolen device. If it may not be available at the time we need it, I'm going to have to look for other solutions.
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+56Sorry about that - this issue is under active investigation by our dev team to figure out what the root cause is and get a fix in place. I'll let you know when I hear more from them.
+56Also have you tested out the Scream or Locate features when the phone is in that state? There's some question as to whether they might still work even if the status is showing wrong.
That's a good suggestion. However, the Locate and Scream functions aren't available when the device is in this condiftion (Grayed out).
+56Makes sense - I've let the dev team know that detail.
I could copy and paste the original post as my own. Same thing - "WebRoot iOS agent is not running" and the app on the phone is fine. But also this:"My clients are business owners with a lot on their plate. I am paid to provide a service so that they don't have to concern themselves with it." is of major concern for myself as well. I recommended Webroot to a 15 person firm and bringing false positives to them causes them to question me, not Webroot. Ouch.
+56Sorry again - go ahead and open a ticket with our support so that we can get it documented and sent to escalations. The more people the issue the higher priority it will get.
Has there been any progress on this? There are multiple MDM solutions out there and I bought this with the understanding that it would provide both AV and MDM services. I'm finding out that for iOS is does really neither. All of my iOS devices are "in need of attention" becuase of Webroot iOS agent is not running. If this is a managed solution, there should be no way the agent should ever stop running.
I am also experiencing this same issue with two out of three iPhones in my company. Has Webroot resolved this yet?
Statement from our Mobile Team:
This issue is greatly improved on newer Apple operating systems. If these users are not on iOS 9 or 10 (unlikely), they should upgrade the OS. We have also seen some end users stopping the app from running or refreshing in the background.
This article and other similar ones explain details about how users do that in more detail:
http://www.howtogeek.com/204552/no-closing-background-apps-on-your-iphone-or-ipad-wont-make-it-faster/.
End users should not do this with our app, or it will cause problems with lost device protection. (That’s an Apple limitation.) Between background app use and OS version, this may just fix the issue. However, we have seen problems occur when devices are on a recent OS and users are not preventing the app from working as I described above. We are continuing to investigate these issues.
This issue is greatly improved on newer Apple operating systems. If these users are not on iOS 9 or 10 (unlikely), they should upgrade the OS. We have also seen some end users stopping the app from running or refreshing in the background.
This article and other similar ones explain details about how users do that in more detail:
http://www.howtogeek.com/204552/no-closing-background-apps-on-your-iphone-or-ipad-wont-make-it-faster/.
End users should not do this with our app, or it will cause problems with lost device protection. (That’s an Apple limitation.) Between background app use and OS version, this may just fix the issue. However, we have seen problems occur when devices are on a recent OS and users are not preventing the app from working as I described above. We are continuing to investigate these issues.
Wow... this is rediculous! Reading the previous posts I would hope none of our end users should have to do anything with Webroot at all. The reason I'm responding to this post is because I'd like to know if the issue has been identified and resloved by Webroot? I logged into the Portal today and was surprised to see that all our devices "Need Attention". Our company uses Mobile Protection on iPads all running iOS 10.2, some of our technicians struggle with email let alone worrying about security software. I'm looking at Warnings on our iPads and it seems the agent has stopped approximately 7 days after I last deployed and manually checked into Webroot on each device.
There shouldn't be any reliance on end users at all and the agent should not stop running in any case unless the device is actually off, it should also restart as soon as the device is turned on. Surely the agent should not need to be started by end users every time they turn on their devices?
Can someone please answer in what scenarios does the agent stop running? Any decent security product would not normally work this way unless a service is stopped or the app is uninstalled.
We've also found that the Webroot Locate function under Lost Device Protection is flaky at the best of times or doesn't work at all - and we have GPS enabed on all our devices. We can only locate a device after manually opening the Webroot app on the actual device which completely defeats the purpose. The Apple iCloud find my device function works fine. Has anybody else had this experience?
There shouldn't be any reliance on end users at all and the agent should not stop running in any case unless the device is actually off, it should also restart as soon as the device is turned on. Surely the agent should not need to be started by end users every time they turn on their devices?
Can someone please answer in what scenarios does the agent stop running? Any decent security product would not normally work this way unless a service is stopped or the app is uninstalled.
We've also found that the Webroot Locate function under Lost Device Protection is flaky at the best of times or doesn't work at all - and we have GPS enabed on all our devices. We can only locate a device after manually opening the Webroot app on the actual device which completely defeats the purpose. The Apple iCloud find my device function works fine. Has anybody else had this experience?
I need an update from WebRoot on the current state of this issue. It's time to renew my mobile licenses and I'm looking at alternatives. Thanks.
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