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!).

Indeed, no to Cisco Web security

[felipe alfaro solana (from livejournal.com)]

Thanks, Toby. Indeed I noticed that the Web security module was consuming a considerable amount of network bandwidth. I also believe this service is not needed to use the VPN service, so I decided to uninstall it using your instructions. Thanks a lot for sharing this very nice and useful tip.

Re: Indeed, no to Cisco Web security

[tobyaw]

Glad I was able to help. Re-reading my LJ post, I realise that it doesn’t really capture how annoyed I was with Cisco for installing something that was impacting the performance of my Mac.

Thank you :)

[shaun rust (from livejournal.com)]

Worked like a charm.

Thank You

[smivey (from livejournal.com)]

I was having issues with my MacBook Air running hot most of the time. Discovered the source through the Activity Monitor, but couldn't figure out what to do about it. Found your tip on another blog, which was properly attributed to you. Worked great. So, thank you.