A detailed look at the areas to consider when planning your migration to Endpoint Cloud. While most environments may differ slightly, there are many considerations that go in to planning a successful endpoint security migration that apply to all environments.

Find the right time to migrate

This may be the most complicated part of your entire AV migration!  When dealing with AV migrations it is absolutely critical that the work is started and finished without interruption.  It is extremely likely that at least one reboot will need to take place and with this being AV software, until that happens the device is at risk.  The risk could be very minimal but it’s a risk you don’t want to take.  

• Schedule the software migration for off business hours with stakeholder buy-in
  • Ensures you are free to work without the worry of interruption
• Send multiple reminders to key stakeholders that work will be interrupted during this scheduled time
  • Ensures everyone involved in the project knows the schedule and the impact to your business
  • Ensures continued stakeholder buy-in
• Before you begin the migration send another reminder to save your work and log out
  • Ensures your user base understands the migration is starting and further ensures you are free to work without the worry of interruption or needing to pause
• After you complete the migration inform your users that they are clear to log in and work again
  • Provides a green light for your users to begin working without the worry of losing data or being interrupted by a system reboot

By planning your migration, you ensure the best possible work experience for you and your team along with the best possible experience for your users by setting appropriate expectations.

Understand what you are migrating

There is never a better time to review your security settings than when you are migrating from one vendor to another.  Before you start your migration, you should take some time to get really familiar with your security settings.  It is entirely possible that you already know these settings like the back of your hand.  Kudos to you!  It’s also entirely possible that you are new to this client and have inherited multiple years of configuration changes, we’ve all been there at one point or another!

• Inventory the devices impacted by the migration
  • Build a list of servers and their primary roles and what impact the migration will have on them
  • Find out if there are endpoints that have special software or roles being performed or users that may work odd hours or are located in different time zones
  • Compile a compatibility matrix to ensure all device types are supported
    • The goal is to avoid surprises and have a clear understanding of the business impact
• Review your current exclusions and policies
  • Exclusions that are no longer needed should not be migrated as they only pose a security risk
  • Exclusions that are needed should be migrated to your new endpoint security software to ensure applications function as expected
  • Your device inventory should assist greatly with understanding what exclusions need to be migrated and which are no longer required
• Make note of any software that needs to be tested post migration
  • The best migration is the one nobody notices and making note of software to test is a huge part of an unnoticed migration
    • You do not want users reporting applications not working the day following your migration

By taking a full device and software inventory and reviewing this data with key stakeholders you are setting yourself up for a successful migration.  These steps ensure that you and your team know exactly what the business impact will be, which servers will need to be rebooted, which exclusions represent a security risk and which should be migrated, and what software needs to be tested once your migration is complete.  We also recommend having a documented test plan to ensure that you don’t run in to applications or operating systems that are unaccounted for.

Considerations when performing the migration

Now that we’ve scheduled the migration and received stakeholder buy-in and performed our pre-migration steps, we’re ready to tackle the actual migration!  The typical on-premise AV migration takes place in multiple stages:

1. Installation of the new AV server software
2. Configuration of the new AV security settings, exclusions, and policies
3. Removal of existing AV endpoint security software
4. Installation of new AV endpoint security software
5. Testing

Between stages 3 and 4 there is often a period where endpoints are unprotected.  If you have scheduled your migration properly this isn’t a big deal but if you have users still in the office and using their computers this could represent a major security risk.

VIPRE has a feature that we call C.A.R.T. which stands for Competitive Agent Removal Tool.  This means that VIPRE removes the need to uninstall your existing AV software (stage 3) and handles that automatically for you during the installation of your new AV software (stage 4) which also helps to reduce the risk of infection due to endpoints being unprotected.  While this is a huge security benefit, it’s an even bigger time saver by removing the need to actually do the work of uninstalling your existing AV software!  This may not seem like a big deal in smaller environments but when you start talking about 100, 500, 2500+ endpoint environments, VIPRE helps save a ton of time and effort!

So, what does our migration look like with VIPRE?

1. Install VIPRE Server
2. Configure VIPRE Server settings, exclusions and policies
3. Deploy VIPRE Agents from VIPRE Server
   • The VIPRE installer will automatically remove your existing AV Software
4. Testing

That’s it, you’re done!  VIPRE is deployed to all endpoints, your policies and exclusions from your previous AV software have been reviewed and configured in VIPRE, and the testing of required applications has been completed.  Your users are free to work without interruption and with peace of mind that VIPRE is protecting them!