Adobe Flash Updated in a Flash!

On July 14, 2015, Adobe released a security update for Flash, version 18.0.0.209.  This was in response to Mozilla's blacklisting earlier versions of Flash due to security concerns.

Thanks to the nimble work of Device Management, 94% of university-owned Macs and 96% of university-owned Windows computers now have the latest version!

Email Campaign to Enroll University Macs

The device management team has sent out an email to registered users of Mac computers. The email is part of a campaign to enroll University owned Macs in device management. If you have questions, please contact devicemanagement@pepperdine.edu.

Endpoint Protection on University-owned Macs

A small number of people who use Macintosh computers owned by Pepperdine University have independently installed Sophos anti-virus protection.  This was a great and proactive step, but is no longer necessary.

Consequently, starting today, Device Management will replace any independently installed versions of Sophos on university-owned Macintosh computers with our enterprise version, known as Endpoint Protection.

Adobe Acrobat Pro XI for Mac updates to 11.0.10

In a previous post we detailed how all faculty and staff computers are receiving Adobe Acrobat Pro XI automatically. Since then, Adobe has continued to update the program. Windows computers are applying these updates silently but the Mac version requires some user interaction. However, Device Management has greatly simplified these necessary steps. Starting today, any Mac which has a non-current version of Acrobat Pro XI will be prompted to update with the following notification:

Mac alert window for Adobe Acrobat Pro update

Mac users may notice that this alert box looks different than it has in the past. This design change creates a uniform Device Management experience between Mac and Windows computers. If you see this alert please close any instance of Adobe PDF programs then click "Ok." When the process is complete another Device Management notification will pop-up:

Mac alert indicating successful upgrade

Flash Auto-update Turned On

Many people configure programs to update automatically.  This is a good practice and in some cases will keep your computer up to date even before Device Management can patch it!

Consequently, in order to make your life easier and to provide better security, Device Management is turning on the auto-update feature of Adobe Flash on February 25, 2015 for all those who have this program on their computers owned by Pepperdine University.

Note: If you currently have Adobe Flash Extended Support Release (ESR) 13, then it will be upgraded to version 16 and version 13 will be removed.