Avast Business Cloud Management Console 8.6 - Remote Control (new service)

[Pavel Jirsak]

We're pleased to announce that Avast Business Cloud Management Console 8.6 has been released! (September 23, 2020)

This release brings our new service offering: Avast Business Premium Remote Control, smaller stability or quality of life improvements and bug fixes.

In order to enable or purchase the service, you have to open the new UI from the Devices page and then go to Account - Subscriptions. Deployment and connection to devices is then available from the Beta Devices page.

-------------------------------
Console: 8.6
Win Agent: 4.23
Win Antivirus: 20.6
Mac Agent: 6.4   
Mac Antivirus: 14.5

New Service
Single-tenant and Multi-tenant administrators will now be able to use our new service to help remotely connect to devices and troubleshoot issues more efficiently, there are two versions of Remote Control:
•   Basic Remote Control
o   This is a free version
o   5 sessions a month, at 5 minutes each (1 concurrent session - means the admin can connect to a device at a time)
o   Can be installed on an unlimited number of devices
o   Available to additional admins in the Cloud Console

•   Premium Remote Control
o   Admin can purchase 1 concurrent session for 1, 2 or 3 years (3 and unlimited concurrent sessions coming very soon)
o   Can be installed on an unlimited number of devices
o   Available to additional admins in the Cloud Console
o   Available for purchase through the shopping cart for direct customers
o   Available for purchase through our Order Management System for Partners and Distributors

New Feature(s) & Enhancements
•   With the Avast Business Antivirus Pro Plus 20.7 version release, we will now support a new feature: Password Protection
To support this new feature, we have added policy support under Policy->Windows Workstation as new component "Password Protection" with text "Secure your browser-stored passwords against theft" with an On/Off toggle.

•   Existing reports are now available in the new console, so you no longer have to open the old console to check reports, you can simply access existing reports straight from the new console
•   We have re-ordered the navigation elements within the console for a better user experience

Resolved issues
•   Fixed an issue with Device report CSV export not showing devices with no subscription assigned to them
•   Fixed an issue with Remote Control tooltip text
•   Fixed an issue with Remote Control column filtering on the devices page (Unavailable and Available)
•   Fixed an issue with Remote Control promotion page showing for all consoles types
•   Fixed some cosmetic width spacing issues on the device dashboard and sorting of devices
•   Fixed an issue with Remote Control column not showing by default with or without a subscription
•   Fixed an issue with deleting a policy with an error message

Known issues
CBC-8636   Internal Server error when opening custom policies
CBC-9920   Multiple email notifications for one threat event are generated
CBC-10503   False protection components disabled alerts
CBC-10590   SBR: Communication layer error
CBC-10901   New device in installing status appearing in the console
CBC-11256   Devices not following assigned policy
CBC-13059   Subscribe more device doesn’t work

Avast Business Cloud Management Console 8.6

[Cory37]

Our computers have started updating to Avast client version 20.7, which contains a new "Remote Access Shield" feature.  This new feature is suddenly blocking our remote users from being able to use Windows Remote Desktop to connect to their office computers.  Remote Desktop fails with a generic "An internal error has occurred" message, and on the other side Avast displays an alert about an invalid server certificate.  Our RDP certificates are issued from our internal Window Certificate Authority and fully trusted by these PCs, but Avast doesn't seem to care.

I cannot find any way to disable the Remote Access Shield feature via the cloud console / policy settings.  I just asked support and they told me I need to wait until version 8.7 of the web console to manage this feature.  Our cloud console version says 8.6.2858.  How could a feature be released before there exists a way to manage it?  Manually disabling the Remote Access Shield feature via each PC's settings solves the issue, but we need this applied to all of our computers in the company.

[Pavel Jirsak]

Hi Cory37,
I know about the issue and I apologise for it. We were simply to slow on the console side to make it happen while the AV with the shield was already out.
Today 8.7 is out so I hope it will solve the problem for you.

Thanks for understanding 🙏
Pavel