Last November, we posted about a potential issue with the Mac 10.6.5 (or later) upgrade process and PGP Whole Disk Encryption 10.0.X. Since then, Symantec has provided both a workaround and hotfix to address the client problem encountered with PGP Whole Disk Encryption when updating Mac OS X. A maintenance release that will proactively address this issue is now available.

Symantec has released PGP Whole Disk Encryption 10.1.1 for Mac OS X. After installation of this update, PGP customers can safely update their OS version to Mac OS X 10.6.5 (or later).

For more information on this maintenance release, refer to the post on Symantec’s Encryption Blog.

Complete instructions for how to successfully update to 10.6.5 can be found in this Knowledgebase article.

Note: This post has been updated on Jan. 7, 2011

Symantec has identified a potential issue with the Mac OS X 10.6.6 upgrade process and PGP Whole Disk Encryption. Until this issue is resolved, we strongly recommend that customers using PGP Whole Disk Encryption do not upgrade to Mac OS X 10.6.6. Customers that have already successfully upgraded should take no action.

If the update to OS X 10.6.6 has already been made and the machine fails to boot, the data on the machine is not lost. The system can be restored using the PGP Recovery CD. Instructions can be found in this Knowledgebase Article.

This issue has the highest internal priority at Symantec, and we’re working on a maintenance release that will proactively address this issue. We will update our customers with the resolution information as soon as it becomes available.

_________________________________________________________________________________