Linux Security

The threat landscape is constantly evolving, which also means changes in the protection offered by WithSecure. Old products cannot respond to all the current threats.

Security fixes and non-security fixes are not provided for unsupported product versions. Virus definition updates are not tested with End-of-Lifed products. This may decrease the protection capability and reliability of old products, causing, for example, the malfunctioning of the product, conflicts with third party software, false positives and negatives.

Product versioning

The WithSecure Business Suite solution consists of various products, such as Policy Manager or Client Security. These products have major, minor, and maintenance versions. The major version can also be referred to as the series, defined by the major version number (e.g. 14-series). Each series has its own lifecycle, and multiple product series can be supported at the same time. Typical changes in the product per version type include:

• Major (M.0)
• Distinctively new product generation or significant changes in the product functionality, performance, or security
• Minor (x.N)
• New features and improvements
• Compatibility with changes in other WithSecure products
• Maintenance (x.xc)
• Address critical defects or vulnerabilities
• Support for 3rd party platform updates
• In principle, maintenance releases do not introduce changes to the existing functionality
• Hotfixes
• Also known as patches, they address individual or urgent fixes that do not require a full product release
• Come in two categories: security and non-security hotfixes

•  

WithSecure reserves the right to discontinue or deprecate existing functionality upon releasing a new (major or minor) product version based on changes in the threat landscape, market situation, or any other business reason. All such changes are listed in the product release notes.

Product version support

The product versioning and lifecycle policy described here is applicable only to WithSecure Business Suite. WithSecure's Security Cloud and other backend systems that are used by the product follow an internal lifecycle policy and do not require any actions from customers. WithSecure updates Security Cloud and other services without impact to the application functionality and performance.

The lifecycle of a product series is a minimum of three (3) years from General Availability of the major version or until one (1) year after the release of the next major version, whichever is longer. Inside a product series, minor or maintenance releases do not extend the lifecycle.

A new maintenance release automatically deprecates any previous release within the same minor version. Security hotfixes are provided for every supported version, except in the case of Policy Manager where it is only applicable to the latest version within a series. Non-security hotfixes are provided only for the latest release within a series.

Product updates

WithSecure Business Suite products can be updated by installing the new version from our download section. Users are responsible for updating WithSecure products in their production and ensuring that they are using an officially supported version.

End-of-life communication

WithSecure makes end-of-life product announcements on the End-of-Lifecycle Annoucments page. We encourage users to visit this site regularly as it contains useful information regarding WithSecure's end-of-life program.

To inform partners and customers well in advance of an approaching end-of-life milestone, WithSecure sends an electronic notification respectively 180 days and 90 days prior to a product end of life.

Change policy

WithSecure reserves the right to change this policy without prior notice, in which case the new policy will be made available to partners and customers on the supported products page.