Application Resilience policies for Tanium

You can activate an Application Resilience policy for Tanium™ to collect information about the functional status of Tanium 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.

Application Resilience policies for Tanium 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 Tanium:

    • 7.4.x or higher

      Significant software changes in higher versions may cause health checks to become invalid.

    • 7.2.x

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
Tanium Client (TaniumClient.exe) P P

One of the signers entered in the policy configuration

By default, Signers contains "Tanium Inc.".
Application name

The application uses the following name:

  • Tanium Client* (the asterisk [*] indicates the health check accepts any additional characters starting from that position in the application name)

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
Tanium Client (TaniumClient.exe) P P Tanium Inc.
Application name

The application uses the following name:

  • Tanium Client* (the asterisk [*] indicates the health check accepts any additional characters starting from that position in the application name)

You can configure an Application Resilience policy for Tanium 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 Tanium 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 Tanium Client (TaniumClient.exe) service isn't running

The RAR component restarts the service.
The Tanium Client (TaniumClient.exe) service isn'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.
The Tanium Client (TaniumClient.exe) service isn't installed and the service's executable cannot be detected on the device

If the application is installed, the RAR component uninstalls it. After the application is uninstalled, or if the application wasn't installed, the RAR component downloads and installs the configured version of the application.
Tanium failed to be repaired, or the expected version isn't installed

If you want the Secure Endpoint Agent to reinstall Tanium if it is non-functional or missing, you need to make the following files available:

  • SetupClient.exe
  • tanium-init.dat

To prepare the installers:

  1. Download the client installer bundle from the Tanium Client Management service.

  2. Select the SetupClient.exe and tanium-init.dat files and add them to a new ZIP file. The new ZIP file can have any name.

    Do not include the parent folder in your ZIP file. Do not change the names of the EXE and DAT files.

The ZIP file can now be uploaded to the Secure Endpoint Console or hosted on your own server.

The RAR component looks for the following files names when checking pre-cached installers:

Component File name
Installers TaniumClient.zip containing:
  • SetupClient.exe
  • tanium-init.dat

The installer:

  • must be an MSI file

  • can have any file name

The RAR component looks for the following files names when checking pre-cached installers:

Component File name
Installers TaniumClient.msi

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:

  1. Under Application version, select 7.4.* or higher from the drop-down.

  2. Under Tanium version, enter the version of Tanium that 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 number, for example, 7.* or 7.4.*.

    Make sure the version you are entering is consistent with version 7.4.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 Tanium specific settings:

  1. [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.
  1. [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 Tanium's documentation.

Before you activate an Application Resilience policy you need to configure the policy.