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Enable or disable agent self-protection
The agent self-protection feature is only available for agents on Windows. It is not available on Linux.
Agent self-protection prevents local users from tampering with the agent. When enabled, if a user tries to tamper with the agent, a message such as "Removal or modification of this application is prohibited by its security settings" will be displayed.
To update or uninstall an agent or relay, if you're a local user trying to create a diagnostic package for support from the command line (see Create a diagnostic package), you must temporarily disable agent self-protection.
Anti-Malware protection must be "On" to prevent users from stopping the agent, and from modifying agent-related files and Windows registry entries. It isn't required, however, to prevent uninstalling the agent.
You can configure agent self-protection using either the Workload Security console, or the command line on the agent's computer.
Configure self-protection through the Workload Security console
- Open the Computer or Policy editor where you want to enable agent self-protection.
- Click Settings > General.
- In the Agent Self-Protection section, for Prevent local end-users from uninstalling, stopping, or otherwise modifying the Agent, select Yes.
- For Local override requires password, select Yes and type an authentication password. The authentication password is highly recommended because it prevents unauthorized use of the dsa_control command. After specifying the password here, it must be entered with the dsa_control command using the
-p
or--passwd=
option whenever a command is run on the agent. - Click Save.
- To disable the setting, select No. Click Save.
Configure self-protection using the command line
You can enable and disable self-protection using the command line. The command line has one limitation: you cannot specify an authentication password. You'll need to use the Workload Security console for that. See Configure self-protection through the Workload Security console for details.
- Log in to the Windows agent locally.
- Open the Command Prompt (
cmd.exe
) as Administrator. - Change the current directory to the agent installation folder. (The default install folder is shown below.)
cd C:\Program Files\Trend Micro\Deep Security Agent
- Enter one of the following commands:
To enable agent self-protection, enter:
dsa_control --selfprotect=1
To disable agent self-protection, enter:
dsa_control --selfprotect=0 -p <password>
where -p <password>
is the authentication password, if one was specified previously in Workload Security. For details on this password, see Configure self-protection through the Workload Security console.