This article applies to:

• Marshal product line
• Trustwave SEG
• Trustwave SEG Service Provider Edition (SPE)
• Trustwave ECM
• WebMarshal

Question:

• How does Trustwave provide software maintenance updates for the Marshal Product Line?

Information:

The Marshal products are updated by three methods: Product releases, automatic updates, and manual file changes (buddy drops or roll ups provided through Trustwave Technical Support).

Product Releases

Product releases are delivered as full installation packages including software and documentation. The install or update uses the familiar wizard interface and requires minimal or no user intervention. This method is used for maintenance releases as well as feature releases (major and minor version releases).

• All product releases have been tested and validated through a full development and Quality Assurance cycle, including regression testing.

Automatic Updates

Some components of the MailMarshal and WebMarshal products are updated automatically through a web based back end. These include:

• WebMarshal 6.X and 7.X Scan Engines (such as TRACEnet and SafeSearch)
• WebMarshal 7.X file type and unpacking
• SEG and ECM file type and unpacking (PDF unpacking in version 6.9 and above, additional file type and unpacking items in SEG 7.1 and above, TextCensor 2 in SEG 7.2 and above).

• Components that are posted for automatic update have passed development and Quality Assurance testing.
• For more information about how to verify that updates are working correctly, see Q12992.

Buddy Drops/Roll Ups

Where a customer experiences significant issues with product functionality that require an urgent correction, Trustwave may offer a "buddy drop". Typically the "drop" involves replacement of a single executable file, and requires the customer to stop one or more services, back up and replace the file, and restart services.

Updates provided as buddy drops have not undergone full Quality Assurance testing, but the code has been reviewed and the update has been shown to resolve the reported issue in the developer's environment. Customers agree to provide feedback to Trustwave concerning the success of the fix and any other observed effects. Customers should be prepared to back out any change if necessary.

Buddy drops will be provided as a cumulative package or "roll up", including all changes that have been delivered to any customer via this method since the previous product release.

Notes:

• Customers who have applied a buddy drop or roll up should upgrade to a maintenance release as soon as one is available.
  • Quality Assurance tests the upgrade process from the latest version with roll ups or buddy drops applied, but does not test upgrade from earlier versions with roll ups.
• Once an issue is addressed in a publicly available maintenance release, Trustwave does not normally provide buddy drops for the issue. Customers must upgrade to the public release. The reasons for this policy are:
  • As noted above, maintenance releases have undergone full Quality Assurance testing while buddy drops have not.
  • Buddy drops make it more difficult to support and test for upgrade scenarios in future maintenance releases.  
• In deciding to apply any buddy drop, customers should balance the impact of the continuing issue as against the need to apply product upgrades soon after release.