Microsoft has announced that beginning August 12th [Update: Microsoft announced a delay in implementation until September 9, 2014] Internet Explorer will block out-of-date ActiveX controls (Please review the Microsoft blog post: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2014/08/06/internet-explorer-begins-blocking-out-of-date-activex-controls.aspx). The JRE plug-in is such a control and application of this update may impact Agents.
Organizations which allow Agent computers to be updated with this release by Microsoft will see warning messages when launching the Agent client. This will not prevent the Agent Client from running if the Agent allows the Java application to run.
There are methods provided by Microsoft to remove these warning messages from occurring for a better Agent experience. These are outlined in the same blog post mentioned above. These include, but are not limited to:
Selected domains can be managed for which Internet Explorer will not block or warn about outdated ActiveX controls. This policy is “Turn off blocking of outdated ActiveX controls for Internet Explorer on specific domains” and includes a list of top level domains, host names, or files.
This feature can be turned off by using the policy “Turn off blocking of outdated ActiveX controls for Internet Explorer.” This might be used temporarily in combination with logging, to assess ActiveX controls before re-enabling the feature. This can also be enabled, like all four policies, with a registry key—in this case, a REG_DWORD “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Ext\VersionCheckEnabled" with value of zero.
While Moxie support is able to provide some advice, your IT department is best positioned to decide on the correct approach for your Agents and your environment.
Once this has been released by Microsoft, Moxie may update this article with updated information found as a result of testing.
Please note that Moxie has not yet certified a JRE version later than 1.7u55.