No Definition Updates On Weekends and Holidays?

  • 14 January 2019
  • 6 replies
  • 184 views

Userlevel 7
For the last month I've been watching and keeping track of the "Definition Updates" on WSA for Mac and I have noticed that the definitions do not update on the weekends or holidays.



For example:

12/21/18 the definition was: 1043

12/26/18 the definition was: 1044



12/31/18 the definition was: 1047

01/02/19 the definition was: 1048



Friday 01/11/19 the definition was and still is today at the time of this post 01/14/19: 1055



Is there a reason there are no updates on the weekend or holidays but there is an update every day during the week?



@MacDaddy385 @PVaddi @LLiddell




6 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +62

@ProTruckDriverbrought this up about definitions a year ago. I have been running the Mac Beta since 2014. I learned a lot from @ProTruckDriver, he was always on his toes with new Mac questions. Now I am the only one that seems to run the Mac Beta consistently.  So doing the Mac Beta alone seems discouraging. This is what I have dug up and have saved since the last 7 months in the way of Definitions… to few and far between it seems like the definitions are not updated enough for todays world. Am I truly protected with running Webroot?

Sorry I did not keep as good of a record as Dave has/had.

01/20- 9.0.10.162.1276

02/15/20-9.0.10.162.1339

04/20/20-9.0.10.162. 1373

05/27/20 -9.0.162.1410

06/27/20 -9.0.10.162.1433

With the lack of people participating in the Mac Beta Forum...I have slacked on keeping up…

@freydrew@PVaddior anyone can give me insight to whether the Definitions are up to date on a daily. weekly, or hourly bases?

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +62

Thank you @ProTruckDriver for sharing this information for all of us here! Kudos for researching your fabulous question. :blush:

Userlevel 7

I believe I may have found the answer to this old thread I started that was never answered by Webroot. I can across this thread today on the Malwarebytes Forum by Thomas Reed (Mac Expert). If Webroot runs basically the same updating  definitions on a Mac this would probably be the reason for no updates every day. I’m glad us Mac users are not (so far) in the cross hairs with Malware / Adware like Windows is. But the time are changing every day.

https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/253915-malwarebtes-for-mac-protection-update-number/?tab=comments#comment-1346686

Yeah, keep in mind that the Mac threat landscape is very different from Windows, and we don't have to update as often. Sometimes - like right now - things get really quiet for a while and there's no need for an update except every now and then. Then there's a flurry of new adware releases, or some new malware is discovered, and it gets busy again. There's no predicting how often the database will be updated... could be multiple times in a single day, could be once in a few weeks.

 

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +36
Yeah I'm not sure why they do that either. I'll ask and see if they can address it, although right now there are higher priorities (LP, Beta, etc.)
Userlevel 7
I'm not 100% certain but I believe this is so we have our support team available if anything goes wrong.
Maybe I didn't ask the question right.

WSA is 100% Cloud based on the PC's. When ever there is an update to defend against Malware the update is sent in the cloud and every PC that has WSA gets the update 24/7.

Now on the Mac computer my understanding is that it is not 100% Cloud based. It gets updated by definitions. The definitions from me looking at it daily only get updated on the week days, they are not updated on the weekends or holidays. Seem odd to me why no definition up date on weekends and holidays?
Userlevel 7
Badge +36
I'm not 100% certain but I believe this is so we have our support team available if anything goes wrong.

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