No to Cisco Web Security

[tobyaw]

A while ago I installed Cisco AnyConnect on my Mac, in order to VPN in to work. Recently I noticed that a process acwebsecagent was logging multiple failures every minute to my system log; with a bit of investigation it appears that the AnyConnect installer defaults also installs Cisco Web Security, unless one chooses to uncheck it.

As far as I can tell Web Security appears not to be related to AnyConnect’s VPN functionality; it is a separately licensed Cisco service, and if it isn’t configured it appears to have a performance impact on one’s Mac.

If it is installed, you can remove it with:
sudo /opt/cisco/anyconnect/bin/websecurity_uninstall.sh

More info at:
http://www.thebitguru.com/blog/view/394-Random%20Slowdown%20of%20Browsers%20in%20OS%20X%20Mountain%20Lion

Comments

Very helpful!

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for this Toby. I've been uploading loads of photos to flickr just lately and noticed thousands of these acwebsecagent logs in system.log, many each second. I ran the uninstall script and all is now happy (including still being to use my actual VPN connection!).