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- Cyber Attacks. It seems like every week, we hear another major news story about a ransomware or malware attack that's affected a huge organization. The older your release, the longer hackers have to find bugs and issues to exploit. Cyber attackers can also read Moodle's release notes, which list the security issues addressed by their latest release. If you neglect to update your system and install the latest security patches, you are increasing your risk of a cyber attacker exploiting the known vulnerabilities of your system.
- Bug Fixes & New Features. While security is a major reason to update software and can't be overstated, there are some cool benefits to software updates. Often you'll see improved performance, bug fixes and/or new features. Since our clients' feedback is at the center of Dual Code's development process, you'll most likely find user experience and user interaction improvements with most new software releases.
- Software End-of-life. As new major releases become available, older releases reach an end-of-life, at which point, Dual Code stops supporting them. Once a release has reached its end-of-life, Dual Code no longer fixes bugs or security issues with that older release. By remaining on this older version, you are not only at risk of a cyber attack, but Dual Code may also not be able to support you.
Upgrade / Update Process
New in 3.9.12.When a new update becomes available, our automated process installs a copy of your live server (after anonymizing some of the user information for privacy reasons) on one our internal update staging servers designed specifically for update testing purposes. It then applies the software update and runs a complete system health check, which executes over 21,000 automated tests. Any failure will be inspected by one of our specialists for resolution. Once 100% of the tests pass Improvements in both our processes and products mean that Dual Code can now offer its clients zero-touch updates. Zero-touch updates mean that clients no longer need to schedule the update of their systems via our Help Desk nor verify the update on their staging server before approving the upgrade of their live environment.
Our release process requires the successful execution of over 21,000 automated tests against all areas of our software before an update becomes generally available. And that's not all! Dual Code then further verifies each and every client installation by applying the update to a copy of their live environment and then running a complete system health check against that copy. The results are displayed in a System Health report available in your system. Any reported failure will be manually inspected by one of our application specialists. When no failures are reported, the system will automatically schedule the update of both your production live and staging server and send you a notification via email and using the system's built-in notification tool. Note that starting in 3.9.12, the update of the production and staging server are scheduled to take place servers and notify all System Administrators.
The production and staging servers are scheduled to get updated at the same time as since you are no longer not required to review and/or approve the update of your production server. That being said, if it is your preference to verify the new functionality on a staging server prior to updating your production server, you may accelerate the update of your staging serverupdates. This eliminates pain points for organizations as well as delays, and in turn reduces your exposure to cyber attacks. Organizations who prefer to assign resources to manually verify the update on their staging server prior to updating their live environment can do so by leveraging a scheduling tool built in the learning environment to re-schedule the date and time of the update for either system (e.g. staging or production).
Depending on the nature of the update, you administrators also have the option to reschedule and/or skip the update on your production server as wellskip it. Skipping an update is only possible if the update is not mandatory (e.g. if it doesn't contain critical security issues AND if your any high-priority security fixes and if the system is no more than 2 releases versions behind).
This fully automated process ensures that keeping your site up-to-date is simple, easy and safe! It requires zero-touch from you and your team. And it is definitely much safer than the risk associated with not upgrading your learning environment!
Release Schedule
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