Cisco Cisco ASA 5510 Adaptive Security Appliance

Stackable time-based 
licenses

Time-based licenses are now stackable. In many cases, you might need to renew your 
time-based license and have a seamless transition from the old license to the new one. For 
features that are only available with a time-based license, it is especially important that the 
license not expire before you can apply the new license. The adaptive security appliance allows 
you to stack time-based licenses so you do not have to worry about the license expiring or about 
losing time on your licenses because you installed the new one early. For licenses with 
numerical tiers, stacking is only supported for licenses with the same capacity, for example, 
two 1000-session SSL VPN licenses. You can view the state of the licenses at Configuration > 
Device Management > Licensing > Activation Key.

Intercompany Media Engine 
License

The IME license was introduced.

Multiple time-based licenses 
active at the same time

You can now install multiple time-based licenses, and have one license per feature active at a 
time.

The following screen was modified: Configuration > Device Management > Licensing > 
Activation Key.

Discrete activation and 
deactivation of time-based 
licenses.

You can now activate or deactivate time-based licenses using a command.

The following command was modified: activation-key [activate | deactivate].

The following screen was modified: Configuration > Device Management > Licensing > 
Activation Key.

Master Passphrase

The master passphrase feature allows you to securely store plain text passwords in encrypted 
format. It provides a master key that is used to universally encrypt or mask all passwords, 
without changing any functionality. The Backup/Restore feature supports the master 
passphrase.

The following screens were introduced:

Configuration > Device Management > Advanced > Master Passphrase
Configuration > Device Management > Device Administration > Master Passphrase

Upgrade Software from 
Cisco.com Wizard

The Upgrade Software from Cisco.com wizard has changed to allow you to automatically 
upgrade ASDM and the adaptive security appliance to more current versions. Note that this 
feature is only available in single mode and, in multiple context mode, in the System execution 
space. It is not available in a context.

The following screen was modified: Tools > Check for ASA/ASDM Updates.

Backup/Restore 
Enhancements

The Backup Configurations pane was re-ordered and re-grouped so you can choose the files 
you want to backup more easily. A Backup Progress pane was added allowing you to visually 
measure the progress of the backup. And you will see significant performance improvement 
when using backup or restore.

The following screen was modified: Tools > Backup Configurations or Tools > Restore 
Configurations.