F-Secure Product Life Cycle Policy - Corporate License Products

Overview

Products reach their end of life for various reasons. These reasons may be due to changes in demand, technology innovation and changes in competitive landscape, or the products simply mature over time and are replaced by new ones. While this is an established part of the overall product life cycle, F-Secure recognizes that end-of-life milestones often prompt customers to review the way in which such milestones impact the F-Secure products in their environments. With that in mind, we have set out F- Secure's End of Life Policy to help customers better manage product end-of-life transition and to understand the role that F-Secure can play in helping them to migrate to alternative F-Secure products and solutions.

The End of Life Policy applies to End of Life announcements made on or after November 1st, 2007 for all F-Secure Corporate License products. The Policy does not apply to product that is already subject to an End of Life and/or End of Sale announcement.

Policy for Corporate License Products

• Product Life Cycle is set for Product Series. Multiple product series can be active at the same time. Product Series is defined with product Major Version number i.e. 6-series and 7-series of F-Secure Client Security.
• Product Life Cycle length is three years from General Availability of a Major Version in each Product Series, or until one year after release of a successor major version, whichever is longer.
• Inside a Product Series individual product releases do not extend length of life span. Product release can be minor product release, security or non-security hotfix release.
• Security Hotfixes are made on Current version and one version prior to that in each supported product series.
• Non-security hotfixes are made on Current version of each supported product series.
• Service Pack releases are made on Current version of each supported product series.
• F-Secure makes product end of life announcements at Product Status Information page. We encourage you to visit this site regularly as it contains useful information regarding F-Secure's end-of-life program.
• To inform our customers well in advance of an approaching product End-of-Life milestone, customers will be sent an electronic notification first in 180 days and finally 90 days prior to a product End-of-Life.
• F-Secure can use judgment in changing product life cycle or time different to what is defined in this policy due to reasons like an operating system vendor changing their product support life span, or F-Secure decision to stop selling, manufacturing and supporting a product due to business reasons.
• F-Secure reserves rights to change this policy without a prior note in which case new policy is available at Product Status Information

Risks of using products after their End-of-Life date

• Threat landscape evolves constantly, thus requiring changes also in the protection. Old products are not able to respond to all current threats.
• Neither security fixes nor non-security fixes are provided for unsupported product versions.
• Virus definition updates are not tested with End-of-Lifed products. This may cause risks decreasing the protection capability and reliability, i.e. malfunctioning product, conflicts with third party software, false positives and negatives.

End of Life milestones and F-Secure's commitments

Table 1. End-of-life milestones (example)

• General Availability (GA): Product is released for general availability.
• End of Development (EoD): No new functionality is added. Product is still maintained and supported. Introduction of a successor product series calls End of Development for previous product series and all its product versions.
• End of Sale (EoS): Customer can no longer order product/solution, but product is supported and maintained. End of Sale for previous series is initiated by General Availability of the new product series. A new product version sets End of Sale for previous product version.
• End of Life (EoL): Milestone with definite date is generated for Product Series in General Availability. All support and maintenance for a product series with its products is ended. Customer Advocacy will only open cases on the product to recommend an upgrade.
  

Product version definitions

Table 2. Product Series and versions (example)

• Product Series: Product life cycle is defined for Product Series. Multiple product series can be active at the same time. Product Series is defined by major version number ie. 6-series and 7-series.
• Major version release: A major version introduces significant new functionality, new localizations or new platform support. Major version number increases ie. 5.yz to 6.yz
• Minor version release: A minor version introduces minor new functionality, improvements to existing functions, new localizations or new platform support. Minor version number increases ie. 5.0z to 5.1z
• Service Pack release: A service release introduces corrections to problems in earlier product releases but does not introduce new functionality. Service Pack release version number increases ie. 5.00 to 5.01.
• Security Patch: Security Patch is a hotfix targetted to repair a vulnerability.
• Non-security Patch: Non-security Patch is a package that fixes one defect or limited number of defects and must be applied to an installed product.