Elements Endpoint Protection / Server Protection Early Access
We now offer the possibility to define some of your endpoints as part of a early access group through the Elements Security Center Portal. Administrators can set in Profiles General Settings | Early access to client software (was: Pilot Client) -toggle on, identifying the computers that will receive our product update in advance of the full release. Since launch of this feature last week, we have seen nice numbers of partners opting in a subset of their computers into the early access group.
How We Released Before
With Elements service, we have teams at WithSecure actively developing the endpoint clients to provide best possible security and quality. We have carefully crafted a thougthful yet fast delivery of new features and bug fixes, which means your endpoints have seen more than one release a month. These are delivered without requiring a reboot, mirroring the good practices we have finetuned at WithSecure over decades of delivering protection updates multiple times a day. We have recognized moving fast is necessary to respond to the modern threat landscape.
As a new version with customer-relevant improvements is growing through individually tested changes, we make a decision to release. With each release, we have various quality control steps built against the vision of doing our best to make things better for our users. As we have released a new version, we monitor it. These are all transparent parts of the service.
Our release mechanism has proven to be reliable and improving. Simultaneously, our monthly active user count has grown. As a release is made available, it has reached all of our customers and updated with a limit we have set on daily numbers. Our administrators have had no control over who gets updated and when.
How We Release Now, with Early Access
The "Early access to client software" option in profile gives more control to Administrators on who gets updated and when.
As part of the service, we still want to deliver your endpoints the latest protection we have available, but allow you to split your users to two categories. The early access group gets our software updates exactly as before. The computers you don't move to early access group get our software with one week delay. Only those of you who do not move to the early access group see a change from how we released before.
Expecting a Fix and Want to Get to New Faster?
We work towards the idea that the reasons for us providing you a release is improved security, functionality and quality. Should you see something in our release contents that you want sooner, we wanted to mention how to make that happen.
In portal, you would (temporarily) move your profile to early access and that gives you a week of head start on the release. This still has download limitation in place, and to get your computers to get the latest you can run the Send Full Status Update remote action or if you want the control with users, use the Check for Updates functionality in the client.
We hope you find the functionality useful and have some of your computer's part of the early access group. We would be happy to discuss this with our user community, and hear your ideas for improvements.
More info - How We Deal with Beta
As emphasized above, this early access is not a beta. It is a full blown release, for your convenience with control over which clients receive it. We have a separate mechanism of dealing what you would consider beta including two approaches: WithSecure computers for the managed model and sharing a public technology preview beta with Safe for feedback from 2000 users continuously.
On behalf of the team developing, maintaining and operating Elements EPP for Computer/ Server Windows Endpoint clients.
Maaret