Specifications

Client tasks

Client tasks run on the clients and are typically scheduled to run at a specific time. They are different

from policies because they are an action that the client must perform at a predetermined time.

Many of the tasks are specific to certain products, if you have their extensions checked in to ePolicy

Orchestrator. But the major tasks dedicated to the McAfee Agent are:

• Product deployment — Tells the agent which products you want it to deploy to the client

• Product update — Uses the McAfee Agent update content such as VirusScan signatures, engine,

or product patches

Client tasks can be set at a group or machine level and always inherits to the group or machine below

them. Always try to set your client tasks at the highest point of your directory tree, like the My

Organization level. This reduces the number of tasks you have to manage and keeps your

administration overhead to a minimum.

Contents

Deploy products

Updating products

Deploy products

Product deployment tells the agent which products you want deployed to the client and when.

To deploy a product you must create a task and either link it to policy enforcement or schedule it to

occur. The agent deploys the products in the order you specify until all products are installed using the

schedule you specify.

Many of the tasks are specific to certain products, for example VirusScan Enterprise or SiteAdvisor if

you have their extensions checked into ePolicy Orchestrator. But there are two tasks that are

dedicated to the McAfee Agent. Those two tasks are Product deployment and Product update. See

Updating products for detailed product updating information.

You also have the option of running this task at every policy enforcement interval. This feature can be

confusing. See Configuring the policy enforcement interval for details. Policy enforcement occurs every

five minutes by default on all clients based on the McAfee Agent policy. Policy enforcement is purely

local and does not need to communicate with the McAfee ePO server. Policy enforcement makes the

agent compare the last known product policy pulled from the McAfee ePO server to the current policy

on the client. By enabling this feature the agent confirms the products you want installed by this task

are still installed at every policy enforcement interval. This is a good way to make sure no changes

occur on the endpoint by the end user. If the end user somehow removes or alters a point product the

agent reinstalls it based on this option.

It is not necessary to enable this option if your schedule is properly built.

See Scheduling product deployment with randomization.

McAfee

ePolicy Orchestrator

4.0 and 4.5 Best Practices Guide