Hi there. Today, we’re looking at the security management modes in Emsisoft protection software. Emsisoft gives you the ability to switch between management modes, which is quite rare in the security space, so you might not have come across this type of setting before.
Let’s get started. As you might remember, during the signup process you were asked to pick one of three management modes: ‘Local only’, ‘Local and Remote’, or ‘Remote only’. Don’t stress if you can’t remember which one you picked – you can change these settings at any time by navigating to your workspace, clicking ‘Settings’ and selecting a management mode up here in the ‘General settings’ section.
The mode you choose can have a big impact on how the protection software on your devices functions, as well as how your software is managed through the Management Console. So, let’s talk about what each mode actually does.
The default mode is ‘Local and Remote’. When this mode is enabled, security settings can be changed both locally on your protected devices and through the Management Console. If you change a setting on the local device, you’ll also see it change in the Management Console after a couple of seconds, and vice versa.
‘Local and Remote’ mode is great if you want a lot of flexibility. But, if you’re an administrator, sometimes you don’t want flexibility – you want control. Let’s say you run a network with dozens of devices and you have lots of users who aren’t very security savvy – you probably wouldn’t want them to be able to access protection settings on their local devices.
In this scenario, you should go for the ‘Remote Only’ mode. When ‘Remote Only’ is enabled, the user interface on your protected devices is reduced to the bare minimum. Users can see the current protection status on their devices, but that’s about it. All of the protection settings are managed exclusively in the Emsisoft Management Console, so there’s no risk of your users changing important security settings or accidentally disabling their malware protection.
There’s one more management mode that we haven’t covered yet, and that’s ‘Local only’ mode. When ‘Local only’ mode is enabled, your devices basically get cut off from the Emsisoft Management Console. They’ll still connect to the Emsisoft servers and they’ll still receive detection updates and licenses, but no settings or log data are transferred to the Management Console. Security settings can only be changed on the local device, which means you can’t define any policies, handle malware infections or view reports in the Console.
Please be cautious with this setting – once you’ve enabled ‘Local only’ mode, all of your stored workspace data is deleted for privacy reasons. And once it’s deleted, it can’t be restored.
To summarise, home users and small-business users should stick to the default ‘Local and remote’ management mode. If you have a bigger organization with dedicated cybersecurity admins, ‘Remote only’ mode will probably be your best bet.
That brings us to the end of today’s video. Thanks for joining us.