Cisco security kit loses power to update itself

Cisco has warned that some of its content security products can lose the power to automatically update themselves to cope with new threats.

A Field Notice issued on Monday warned that the AsyncOS Cisco supplies with its web security and email security appliances “might be unable to authenticate with the updates and upgrades server when the Smart Licenses or the traditional license (XML) file expires. As a result, the updates and upgrades will fail.”

The issue is caused by the fact that Cisco has changed licensing for the devices, but the new licensing relies on old files.

As Cisco’s Notice explains, “Smart License enabled virtual Cisco Content Security products still rely on the certificate distributed in the traditional license (XML) file to receive updates and upgrades. The license file expires at the same time the Smart Licenses go Out of Compliance (OOC). Once the license (XML) file expires, the appliance will not be able to authenticate with the updates and upgrades server to receive the updates and upgrades.”

This means that Cisco customers could be fully paid-up under Smart Licences, but still be locked out of updates by the constructs used for the company’s old licensing scheme.

Happily, there’s a workaround: ask Cisco for a new licence and the company will send you a new XML file that should sort things out once you overwrite the old one and convert to Smart Licences.

Cisco says after doing that “the updates and upgrades will go smoothly.”

The networking giant has form with licences that expire at inconvenient times: in early 2019 some of its call center kit experienced similar problems.