Application Resilience policies for SparkCognition EPP
You can activate an Application Resilience policy for SparkCognition™ EPP to collect information about the functional status of SparkCognition EPP installed on your Windows devices and view the results in reports. You can also configure the policy to attempt to repair or reinstall the application.
System requirements
Application Resilience policies for SparkCognition EPP are supported on devices running:
- a supported version of the Windows operating system
-
PowerShell version 5.1 or higher
Due to PowerShell restrictions imposed by Microsoft, Application Resilience isn't supported for this application on devices running Windows 11 SE.
-
one of the following versions of SparkCognition EPP:
-
2022.x or higher
Significant software changes in higher versions may cause health checks to become invalid.
-
Health checks
In addition to checking the version, the following table describes the health checks performed:
If you select Report higher versions as Compliant, higher versions report Compliant without running health checks.
| Component | Test performed | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Services | Installed | Running | Signed by |
| updater (updater.exe) | P | n/a |
One of the signers entered in the policy configuration By default, Signers contains "SparkCognition" and "SparkCognition, Inc". |
| DeepArmor (DeepArmor.Client.SMB.Service.Windows.exe) | P | ||
| Application name | |||
|
The application uses one of the following names:
|
|||
Repairing and reinstalling
You can configure an Application Resilience policy for SparkCognition EPP to enable the Application Resilience (RAR) component A lightweight software component of the Secure Endpoint Agent that detects the status of third party applications installed on a device. The component may also attempt to repair the third party application if it is non-compliant. The RAR component is deployed on a device only when the device is associated with a customized policy group and that policy group's Application Resilience policy is activated. to attempt to repair SparkCognition EPP if it's not functioning, or reinstall it if it's missing or can't be repaired.
Depending on the Absolute product licenses associated with your account, the Report and repair and Report, repair, and reinstall options may not be available.
The RAR component of the Secure Endpoint Agent can respond to the following issues:
| Issue | Resolution |
|---|---|
| Repair | |
| The DeepArmor (DeepArmor.Client.SMB.Service.Windows.exe) service isn't running |
The RAR component restarts the service. |
|
One or more of the following services aren't installed and the service's executable can be detected on the device:
|
The RAR component reinstalls the missing service. |
| Reinstall | |
|
Downgrades are not supported. If the version installed on a device is higher than the expected version, no action is taken. |
|
|
One or more of the following services aren't installed and the service's executable cannot be detected on the device:
|
The RAR component downloads and installs the configured version of the application. |
| SparkCognition EPP failed to be repaired, or the expected version isn't installed | |
Preparing the installer
The installer:
-
must be an MSI file
-
can have any file name
Pre-caching installers
The RAR component looks for the following files names when checking pre-cached installers:
| Component | File name |
|---|---|
| Installers | DeepArmor.msi |
Configuring Application Resilience policies
Before you activate an Application Resilience policy, you need to configure the policy. You need to configure the application version in addition to the settings in Configuring Application Resilience policies.
To configure the application version:
Under SparkCognition EPP version, enter the version of SparkCognition EPP you expect to be running on your devices.
- The target version must be a sequence of digits separated by a period.
-
You can use wildcard "*" characters after the major version, for example, 2022.* or 2022.2.*.
Make sure the version you are entering is consistent with version 2022.x or higher.
If you selected the Report, repair, and reinstall option, you also need to configure these settings in addition to the settings in Configuring Application Resilience policies.
To configure the SparkCognition EPP specific settings:
-
[Optional] To only reinstall the application if it's missing, select the checkbox next to Do not reinstall or upgrade if the app is already installed. When this option is selected, the application is not reinstalled when either of the following conditions apply:
- The application version is lower than the expected version.
- The application can't be repaired.
-
[Optional] Under Additional installation commands, enter the applicable installation command-line parameters to configure any settings not covered by the policy configuration. For more information on available parameters, see SparkCognition's documentation.
