Hackers view Mac OS as a unique challenge to overcome – that discovering and exploiting a vulnerability carries a higher level of prestige. That’s why it’s important to equip your Mac with antivirus that stays on top of emerging viruses and malware and why we remain dedicated to providing protection for Macs. The trial software is sometimes combined with reduced functionality (e.g. If the output is an image, it contains a watermark with the name of the application). After the trial period expires, the application stops work (e.g. Slidepad) or the functionality is significantly reduced (e.g. You cannot save anything — applications from iWork).
-->Applies to:
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This topic describes how to install, configure, update, and use Defender for Endpoint on Mac.
Caution
Running other third-party endpoint protection products alongside Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Mac is likely to lead to performance problems and unpredictable side effects. If non-Microsoft endpoint protection is an absolute requirement in your environment, you can still safely take advantage of Defender for Endpoint on Mac EDR functionality after configuring the antivirus functionality to run in Passive mode.
What’s new in the latest release
Tip
If you have any feedback that you would like to share, submit it by opening Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Mac on your device and navigating to Help > Send feedback.
To get the latest features, including preview capabilities (such as endpoint detection and response for your Mac devices), configure your macOS device running Microsoft Defender for Endpoint to be an 'Insider' device.
How to install Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Mac
Prerequisites
- A Defender for Endpoint subscription and access to the Microsoft Defender Security Center portal
- Beginner-level experience in macOS and BASH scripting
- Administrative privileges on the device (in case of manual deployment)
Installation instructions
There are several methods and deployment tools that you can use to install and configure Defender for Endpoint on Mac.
Third-party management tools:
Command-line tool:
System requirements
The three most recent major releases of macOS are supported.
Important
On macOS 11 (Big Sur), Microsoft Defender for Endpoint requires additional configuration profiles. If you are an existing customer upgrading from earlier versions of macOS, make sure to deploy the additional configuration profiles listed on New configuration profiles for macOS Catalina and newer versions of macOS.
Important
Support for macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) has been discontinued as of February 15th, 2021.
- 11 (Big Sur), 10.15 (Catalina), 10.14 (Mojave)
- Disk space: 1GB
Beta versions of macOS are not supported.
macOS devices with M1 processors are not supported.
After you've enabled the service, you may need to configure your network or firewall to allow outbound connections between it and your endpoints.
Licensing requirements
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Mac requires one of the following Microsoft Volume Licensing offers:
- Microsoft 365 E5 (M365 E5)
- Microsoft 365 E5 Security
- Microsoft 365 A5 (M365 A5)
Note
Eligible licensed users may use Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on up to five concurrent devices.Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is also available for purchase from a Cloud Solution Provider (CSP). When purchased via a CSP, it does not require Microsoft Volume Licensing offers listed.
Network connections
The following downloadable spreadsheet lists the services and their associated URLs that your network must be able to connect to. You should ensure that there are no firewall or network filtering rules that would deny access to these URLs, or you may need to create an allow rule specifically for them.
| Spreadsheet of domains list | Description |
|---|---|
| Spreadsheet of specific DNS records for service locations, geographic locations, and OS. Download the spreadsheet here: mdatp-urls.xlsx. |
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint can discover a proxy server by using the following discovery methods:
- Proxy autoconfig (PAC)
- Web Proxy Autodiscovery Protocol (WPAD)
- Manual static proxy configuration
If a proxy or firewall is blocking anonymous traffic, make sure that anonymous traffic is permitted in the previously listed URLs.
Warning
Authenticated proxies are not supported. Ensure that only PAC, WPAD, or a static proxy is being used.
SSL inspection and intercepting proxies are also not supported for security reasons. Configure an exception for SSL inspection and your proxy server to directly pass through data from Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on macOS to the relevant URLs without interception. Adding your interception certificate to the global store will not allow for interception.
To test that a connection is not blocked, open https://x.cp.wd.microsoft.com/api/report and https://cdn.x.cp.wd.microsoft.com/ping in a browser.
If you prefer the command line, you can also check the connection by running the following command in Terminal:
The output from this command should be similar to the following:
OK https://x.cp.wd.microsoft.com/api/report
OK https://cdn.x.cp.wd.microsoft.com/ping
Caution
We recommend that you keep System Integrity Protection (SIP) enabled on client devices. SIP is a built-in macOS security feature that prevents low-level tampering with the OS, and is enabled by default.
Once Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is installed, connectivity can be validated by running the following command in Terminal:
How to update Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Mac
Microsoft regularly publishes software updates to improve performance, security, and to deliver new features. To update Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Mac, a program named Microsoft AutoUpdate (MAU) is used. To learn more, see Deploy updates for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Mac.
How to configure Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Mac
Guidance for how to configure the product in enterprise environments is available in Set preferences for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Mac.
macOS kernel and system extensions
In alignment with macOS evolution, we are preparing a Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Mac update that leverages system extensions instead of kernel extensions. For relevant details, see What's new in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Mac.
Resources
For more information about logging, uninstalling, or other topics, see Resources for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Mac.
Privacy for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Mac.
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| Mac OS X DP3: Trial by Water by Dive into Aqua Congratulations, you made it to the part with the pretty pictures. Or did you skip directly here, thus validating Apple's appearance-focused hardware and software strategy? ;-) Let's get started with a bit of traditional Mac OS fun. Mash the modifier keys and select 'About Mac OS' from what was once the Apple menu and you'll get this: Not much of an egg, to be certain (whee, scrolling text), but the 'About...' screen is the quintessential Mac OS easter egg, dating back to the very first Mac. The other less interesting egg is triggered by typing control-alt-delete at the DP3 login screen. You get a very confused dialog that reads 'This is not DOS!' Enough foolishness, let's begin. (Note: the two test machines used for this review were a G3/400 with 256MB RAM and a G4/350 with 64MB RAM. Unless specifically noted, my comments apply to both machines.) DP3 installs much like DP2 or any other recent Mac OS. HFS+ is the default volume format. The first look at Aqua comes during the installation process. A progress bar marches along as your hard drive grinds away. The only button in the installation dialog box is labeled 'pause.' It also happens to be the default button, meaning that if you hit return you will activate the button. Default buttons in Aqua dialog boxes 'pulsate', which is a nice way of saying 'blink.' Not only is this feature mildly annoying (not as bad as, say, a flashing ad banner, but blinking is blinking), it's often misleading as well. In some circumstances, it makes sense to draw the user's attention to the 'common case' (i.e. the default button) by some means. But 'pause' is not the common--or even likely--case during the installation process, and there are better ways to draw attention without being so distracting. (For example, how about a nice 'halo' around the default button?) After installation and a reboot, the 'Setup Assistant' asks the usual questions about time zone, network configuration, and so on. Network options remain limited to AppleTalk and TCP/IP over Ethernet, with a few variations like DHCP and BootP. You're also asked for an 'Administrator password' and presented with a form that allows you to create user accounts. Grind through that process (or skip it all together and just use the administrator account) and wait while DP3 reboots again. The startup process is clean, if unimpressive. You get an Apple logo and the OS name in a window with a progress bar. Startup messages (as defined in the XML property lists described earlier) flash beneath the progress bar as DP3 boots. By tweaking an Open Firmware setting, DP3 can boot with the traditional Unix black screen full of scrolling console messages, a very tiny sample of which appear below: config @ 148af000 (80880000) Most of this is just the usual litany of Unix console messages, and over half of it appears to be error reports and/or debugging code (not listed above because it's boring to see 50 identical error messages in a row). There are a few gems as well, like the very last line indicating that multiple CPUs are disabled in DP3 (although it's not as if there are any multi-CPU Macs outside of Apple anyway). Startup times are very fast, faster than both Mac OS 9 and Linux PPC 1999 on the same hardware by a significant margin (but still not as fast as Be OS on similar hardware). Type a username and password in the login dialog and you're in the Finder. Being a mischievous person, my first order of business was to pop up a terminal window, create 2000 empty files named 'foo1', 'foo2', ... 'foo2000' via a simple command-line script, pull up that folder in the Finder, select all, and drag all 2000 files to the dock... The MWSF keynote showed how the icons in the dock shrink as more are added, but one of my unanswered questions from the previous article was, what happens when the icons can shrink no more? Does the dock expand to multiple rows like the Windows task bar? Do the dock icons shrink to single pixels? Does the dock dump core and exit? Take a look.
That image is at 100%, folks. It's a tiny snippet of the bottom of a 1024x768 screen. Click the image to see a full-width screenshot of the dock. If you squint, you can barely make out the 'generic document' icon on each of those dock tiles. And if you count them, you'll see that there are far fewer than 2000. So, to answer my question, what happens when the dock really fills up? The icons shrink to 6x8 pixels and then scroll of the right and left edges of the screen when they no longer fit! That's not what I'd call 'graceful scaling' of a UI feature. By contrast, I currently have over 3000 items in a single pop-up tab folder in Mac OS 9. It's in list-view and I can get at any item I want by scrolling and/or flipping disclosure triangles on nested folders. It takes up about an inch and a half at the bottom of my screen. Classic Mac OS 1, Aqua 0. (Actually, I'm not going to keep explicit score. I'm sure you can create your own tally.) Worse, with 2000 unrecognizable, identical, mostly inaccessible items in the dock, its responses slow to a crawl. Trying to add or remove anything from the dock at that point is nearly useless. Logging out and back in didn't change the contents of the dock, and I really wanted to get rid of that mess so I could continue testing. This quickly led me to a folder inside my home directory (aptly) named 'Dock Folder.' Predictably, inside were 2000 aliases. I deleted them and the dock was back to normal. Whew, enough malicious hacking. Let's rewind and start again... |
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