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Security Baseline
Establish a minimum security baseline for your ColdFusion installation

Update Cadence, Testing, and Rollback

Last updated: October 4, 20257 min read

Keep your ColdFusion 2025 installation secure and stable by following a disciplined update strategy. At a minimum, track and review updates quarterly, and apply emergency patches immediately when critical security bulletins are released.

Update Policy

ColdFusion 2025 releases updates on a regular cadence. You should actively monitor Adobe's security bulletins and update announcements. Apply critical security patches immediately when they are released, and schedule routine updates to run at least quarterly.

Staging Flow

Always test updates in a staging environment before production deployment:

  1. Create a snapshot or AMI before applying any updates
  2. Apply the ColdFusion core update, then update all packages using cfpm
  3. Restart ColdFusion services and run your smoke tests
  4. Run load tests and monitor performance metrics with PMT
  5. Promote to production only if PMT shows no performance regression

Update Commands

Use cfpm to keep both the core platform and packages up to date:

# Update ColdFusion core
cfpm update --core

# Update all installed packages
cfpm update-all

# List available updates
cfpm list --updates

Rollback Procedure

If an update causes issues, the safest approach is to restore from your pre-update snapshot. If snapshots are unavailable, follow these steps:

  1. Uninstall the most recent update via the ColdFusion Administrator
  2. Restore the backup folders that were automatically created by the updater
  3. Restart ColdFusion services and verify that functionality has been restored
  4. Review application and server logs to identify the root cause of the failure
Note: The ColdFusion updater creates backup folders automatically during each update. You should keep these backups until the update has been verified as stable in production.

Post-Update Validation

After applying updates, verify:

  • All services start successfully
  • Critical application endpoints respond correctly
  • Database connections are functioning
  • Scheduled tasks run as expected
  • PMT metrics show normal performance baselines

Update Checklist

  • Snapshot or backup has been created
  • Update has been applied in staging environment first
  • Smoke tests have passed successfully
  • Load tests have been completed
  • PMT metrics have been reviewed for regressions
  • Rollback plan is documented and ready

Gotchas

  • Packages may require separate updates after applying core hotfixes - always run cfpm update-all to ensure compatibility
  • Custom JVM arguments may conflict with new updates - carefully review your jvm.config file after each update
  • Web server connector settings may need adjustment after major updates to maintain proper communication
  • Always test under realistic load conditions - smoke tests alone may miss performance regressions that only appear under stress

References

Need Help?

Convective can help plan and execute ColdFusion update strategies for mission-critical applications.

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