These misnamed "security" changes are killing us. An open reply to Sean and Connectwise...

eNet

2 months ago
updated 3 weeks ago
Open

Sean,

I am another long time on-prem customer giving feedback. The banners and balloons are annoying to both my customers and my staff (your customers). I started replying in the "Hide Banner" thread, but figured this reply stands more on its own as a request for help to stop the bleed.

Yesterday I updated to the latest 25.7 stable release and now all of my stored credentials don't work and every session asks me if I'm sure I want to delete all stored credentials! Please, STOP pulling the rug out from under us!

When I'm connecting unattended to my own in-house servers, I do NOT need to see banners and balloons telling me I'm connected to my own servers!

My customers know I'm connecting with them. They either request a code from me to connect with them or they sign an agreement with me that allows me to permission to put the unattended client on their computer. My staff knows that they are in a session with the client computer.

Everyone involved knows and has already approved the connection.

If you have reason to not trust the security in ScreenConnect, then fix the security so that you do trust it.

Please stop forcing your customers (me and my staff), and my customers to be constantly annoyed and hindered by your product due to your lack of trust in your product!

1. You have put a balloon saying that the software is running on the locked screensaver.

2. You've put the banner on the top of the window that hinders normal functionality for multiple applications.

3. You've put the icon in the system tray.

4. You've put a notification balloon that pops out on every connect and disconnect.

It's starting to border on harassment with our staff and our customers being forced to see and work around all of these notifications every single day. We get it! You don't trust us or our clients to use your product wisely. That is our decision to make and our agreement to make with our staff and our customers. You should not be forcing this on us or our customers.

Putting these notifications and balloons all over the screen does not make the product any more secure. If you don't trust the security, fix the security.

It is so annoying that ConnectWise is taking the position of trying to control our remote support interaction with our clients. If we don't trust ConnectWise security, we can deal with it in other ways. Your new approach to enforcing our interaction with our clients is neither appropriate or acceptable.

I purchased and installed my own signing cert the same week you guys forced that change on us. Every browser my clients use to download the signed client STILL says it's not a file that is downloaded often and makes my customer jump through hoops to KEEP and run the remote support client. Try finding a solution to that instead of worrying about controlling how we interact with our customers.

Having to start a session with a code is a valid security mechanism. Having a client installed that has encrypted communication with a connection from a server that uses password and two factor authentication is a valid security mechanism. Putting banners and balloons and icons all over the screens is NOT a valid security mechanism, it is an annoyance that we have to look at and deal with multiple times a day EVERY day.

Leave the burden of US trusting and maintaining the security mechanisms that we put in place with our clients on US. Leaving in the OPTION to disable these banners and balloons allows those clients who don't trust your security to turn them on if they need to. Leaving the OPTION in for those of us who have agreements in place with our customers that allow us to maintain unattended access and known/trusted support connections to turn them off if we want to.

Respectfully, Please either fix or trust the security that you build in to your product! Stop trying to mandate how we interact with OUR customers. And allow us (your customers) to deal with the product use and agreements that we maintain with OUR customers.

Eddie

Replies 7

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mtech

3 weeks ago

TacticalRMM sounds cool! I've deployed a few RustDesk Relays but its not really meant as an RMM. Works well for replacing teamviewer for some of my clients. (as in they were paying for teamviewer to remotely access and I provide a solution where they pay me instead of teamviewer :D)

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mark

Quote from NetServicesGroup

What did you decide to use as a replacement?

tacticalrmm with the built in mesh cental for our permanent access sessions on inhouse ubuntu vm. small monthly donation for signed certificate. wasnt as good for support sessions but zoho assist had a good price for add hock only (no permanent sessions) so we are trying that and seems to work good so far.

NetServicesGroup

Quote from mark

Agreed, our on prem license expires in a few weeks. replacement is set up and ready to go. Just cant warrant giving them any more money after the events that have occured over the past months. Sad after so many years of using screenconnect.

Quote from mtech

You're wasting your time my friend. Ever since they've been acquired by ConnectWise they've shown nothing but contempt for their on-prem customers. Time to look for another vendor/solution.

4 weeks ago

Quote from eNet

Has there been any positive conversation about allowing us, your customers, to manage our own agreements and relationships with our own customers?

And/or has Connectwise discussed taking steps toward trusting your own security development rather than taking away our ability to manage our own implementations with our customers?

The burden that you, as an organization built around the premise of creating and improving tools that are supposed to provide better customer service interactions, are placing on us, your clients, whom have agreements in place with our own clients and customers, is extremely frustrating for us.

And the silence toward letting us manage our own customer relationships without being undermined by these backward changes by Connectwise is deafening.

1 month ago

Sean White Team Member

2 months ago

Thank you for sharing such detailed feedback. I want to acknowledge the points you raised and give some clarity on where things currently stand.

On the banners and notifications, we know these changes have had a noticeable impact on long-time on-prem partners. You specifically mentioned the banner at the top of the host client window—this is something we’re actively adjusting. Those updates were originally targeted for an earlier release, but we hit some testing issues. The plan is still to include those improvements in 25.9, which is tentatively scheduled for mid-December. In the meantime, it is possible to move the banner manually.

You also referenced the connect/disconnect notification balloons; we heard this from the community and agreed that this balloon was causing disruption and confusion among end users. The option to control those was reintroduced in 25.7 and has been added back to the Advanced Configuration Editor, so you should now have the ability to manage that behavior again provided you are on 25.7 or higher AND have updated the Advanced Configuration Editor to version 1.3.29.

The system tray icon is an area where we intentionally removed customization options, and we don’t have plans to bring back the ability to hide it. We understand that not everyone agrees with that direction, but it is a deliberate decision from a product standpoint.

For the note about the balloon on a locked screensaver, I’m not entirely sure which behavior that’s referring to, but I’d be happy to dig in further if you can share an example or screenshot.

I appreciate you taking the time to outline how these changes affect your day-to-day support work and your customer experience. The clarity helps, and we’ll continue to be transparent about what’s being adjusted, what’s already available, and where we’re not planning changes.