


With Big Sur, Apple has deprecated several kernel APIs. Big Sur is available on both Intel and the new Apple silicon.

With Big Sur, endpoint security and network security system extensions are the Apple recommended frameworks for endpoint solution providers. Since the release of ENSM 10.6, most of our customers have adopted kext-less as their preferred mode for ENSM and we’ve had great feedback for the solution. Later that year, our plan for kext-less on macOS was justified with Apple announcing system extensions for Catalina. We identified kext-less as the path for a secure and stable endpoint solution on macOS, at the start of 2019. We were the first vendor in the market to introduce kext-less mode for macOS with Endpoint Security for Mac (ENSM) 10.6 in March 2019. Now, with the release of Big Sur, Apple recommends system extension as the standard for endpoint and network security solutions. With system extension drivers now providing APIs that can be accessed in the user space, third-party solutions can no longer compromise the security and stability of the platform. System extensions allow third-party solutions to extend the functionality of macOS and access system events without having to load custom kernel extensions ( kext-less). MacOS Catalina introduced system extensions in 2019. To receive email notification when this article is updated, click Subscribe on the right side of the page.
