The RSA Authentication Manager Engineering team puts a heavy focus on product quality while also working to provide quick responses to our customers. To help ensure high quality and timely delivery of product feature requests, security updates and fixes, we release patches and fixes on a regular cadence.
Service Packs
Service packs are released between product point releases. They usually include smaller features/enhancements, third-party component qualifications and fixes for customer-discovered issues that can fit into a six-to-nine-month release cycle. Service packs can also include updates to common libraries used in the product such as Java-related components, new SUSE kernel versions, or updates to address security vulnerabilities.
Service Packs are only released for the latest supported version of the product. For example, service packs will only be released for RSA Authentication Manager 8.7, which is currently the latest released version.
You can generally upgrade directly or indirectly to a new service pack from every supported version of the product. For example, you can upgrade to service pack 8.1.1 from 8.0.0 and 8.1.0 directly, and indirectly from 7.1.x via an upgrade to 8.1.0 first. 7.1.x, 8.0.0, and 8.1.0 were still supported at the time of the 8.1.1 release. Service Packs cannot be rolled back once installed.
Patches
Patches are generally released on a monthly basis. Patches include fixes for customer-found issues, minor enhancements and can also address security issues. Patches can only be applied to the specific major or minor release for which they were developed and tested. For example, Patch 2 for Authentication Manager 8.5 can be applied to 8.5.0.0 or 8.5.0.1, but not on 8.4.0.0.
Patches are cumulative, and therefore each patch contains all fixes in all previous patches for a given release. Most patches can be rolled back, however, depending on the contents of a patch, some cannot. Even if the patch can be rolled back, the customer will only be able to roll back the last patch applied. Review the patch Readme for information about a specific patch before you apply it.
Contact
For questions on the Authentication Manager major/minor release schedule, contact RSA SecurID Product Management.
