Automatic Updates With Automatic Update Agent; How Automatic Update Agent Works; The Benefits Of Using Automatic Update Agent - F-SECURE POLICY MANAGER 9.0 Administrator's Manual

68 | F-Secure Policy Manager | Updating virus definition databases

Automatic updates with Automatic Update Agent

With Automatic Update Agent, you are able to receive automatic updates and informative content without
interrupting your work to wait for files to download from the Web.
Automatic Update Agent downloads files automatically in the background using bandwidth not being used
by other Internet applications, so users can always be sure they will have the latest updates without having
to search the Internet.
If Automatic Update Agent is always connected to the Internet, it will automatically receive new automatic
updates within about two hours after they have been published by F-Secure. Any possible delays will depend
on when a connection to the Internet is available.
Automatic Update Agent is used to update either centrally managed or stand-alone F-Secure products. By
default the agent also downloads virus news. Downloading news can be disabled if so desired. You may
install and use Automatic Update Agent in conjunction with licensed Anti-virus and security products.

How Automatic Update Agent works

Automatic Update Agent polls the server regularly to see whether there is new content available, which it
then automatically downloads.
When the Automatic Update Agent service is started, it connects to the F-Secure update server. The agent
will keep polling the server regularly to see whether there is new content available. Any new content will be
automatically downloaded. The polling interval is set on the server side and cannot be adjusted from the client
side.
In Policy Manager 6.0 and onwards, the Automatic Update Agent installed with F-Secure products tries to
download the automatic updates from the configured update sources in the following order:
1. If there are Policy Manager proxies in use in the company network, the client tries to connect to Policy
Manager Server through each Policy Manager proxy in turn.
2. If the client is configured to use HTTP proxy, it tries to download the updates through the HTTP proxy
from Policy Manager Server.
3. Next the client tries to download the updates directly from Policy Manager Server.
4. If there are Policy Manager proxies in use in the company network, the client tries to connect to the
F-Secure update server through each Policy Manager proxy in turn.
5. If the client is configured to use HTTP proxy, it tries to download the updates through the HTTP proxy
from the F-Secure update server.
6. After that the client tries to download the updates directly from the F-Secure update server.

The benefits of using Automatic Update Agent

Automatic Update Agent downloads updates automatically, and also saves bandwidth.
Optimized downloads of virus definition updates
Automatic Update Agent detects when the virus definition database has been changed. It uses sophisticated
byte-level algorithms to download only the changes instead of whole files or the whole database. Changes
are typically only a small fraction of the complete update, and this enables dial-up users with slow modems
to get the daily updates conveniently, saving significant amounts of bandwidth for fixed-connection users as
well.