A new release of Carbon Black EDR Server can include a new sensor version. Check the server release notes to confirm if a new sensor version is available. Decide if you want to deploy the updated sensor immediately to existing sensor installations, or only install it where there has not been a sensor before.

Note: Carbon Black strongly recommends that you upgrade your sensors as soon as possible when a new version is available. However, you should not upgrade all sensors simultaneously if you have a large number of sensors, due to potential performance issues.

If you want to use automatic upgrades, consider gradually enabling automatic upgrades one sensor group at a time.

Sensor upgrades might require a reboot.

To upgrade a sensor using the Carbon Black EDR console, you must be one of the following:

  • A user that has the Analyst role for the sensor group for the endpoint.
  • For Carbon Black EDR installations, a Global Administrator.
  • For Carbon Black Hosted EDR installations, an Administrator.

In addition, you must have the following privileges depending on the operating system of the endpoint:

  • For Windows endpoints, you must be a member of the local administrator group.
  • For macOS endpoints, you must have access to an administrator account.
  • For Linux endpoints, you must be a root user or have “sudoer” permissions and run the installer with “sudo”.

Each sensor group has an upgrade policy that determines how and when the sensors in the group are updated, and to what version. You set the upgrade policy for a sensor group in the Create or Edit Group panel of the Sensors page.

Upgrade policy options are as follows:

  • Manually update sensors at the time of your choice using the Download Sensor Installer menu.
  • Automatically upgrade sensors to the latest version.
  • Update sensors to a specific version.

See “Sensor Groups” in the Carbon Black EDR User Guide for a description of the upgrade policy options for a sensor group.