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Mac System preferences > Security & Privacy setting is greyed out. How to activate again?

  • June 29, 2016
  • 3 replies
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Hi all,

Within our batch of Macbooks 10 out of 25 of them have their System preferences > Security & Privacy > General > Require Password = 15 mins after sleep being greyed out.

I searched and searched and searched within our Casper policies, I don't see anything that would restrict the access to security & privacy. And I don't understand why it is happening to only a few Macbooks.

We really need to change this setting to immediately. I want if there's any command or settings I need to do to make it editable again. I have very close access to these Macbooks, so I don't mind doing it on each of the Macbooks personally. I just need some instructions.

Best answer by plawrence

@huangbe I believe this is bug behaviour, see this post and this post
Looks like if you bundle all payloads into one profile you can enforce the setting, but then users wont be able to change it.

3 replies

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  • plawrence
  • Contributor
  • Answer
  • June 29, 2016

@huangbe I believe this is bug behaviour, see this post and this post
Looks like if you bundle all payloads into one profile you can enforce the setting, but then users wont be able to change it.

bentoms
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  • bentoms
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  • June 29, 2016

@huangbe as @plawrence says, combining should work.

I've a post on this issue here.

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  • Bernard_Huang
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  • Valued Contributor
  • July 1, 2016

Thanks @plawrence & @bentoms ,

Thanks for giving me all those clues. I don't understand every word of them, but it did lead me to the right way of thinking.

I have resolved my issue, but even after this, I don't know why it is the fix.

Within the post you provided me, there's mention of Configuration Profiles in regards to Passcode, that somehow interferes with Security and Privacy. And indeed, there is a option for "Maximum time after locking require password" that is to do with when passcode is required.

Out of the people that have this Security & Privacy settings greyed out, I noticed in the logs that all these Macs have successfully pulled down this Passcode Profile.

I therefore switched off this profile (it used to be scoped with all users, now I scope it with specific user, and didn't provide any user names in the list).

Now when rebuilding each Macbook and onboard people, this field is no longer greyed out.

Long story short, the fix is to stop pushing out Passcode Profile.

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