Release Notes & News

Notification: Sophos Email Appliance - Emails being rejected as server configuration errors after upgrading the SEA to the 4.5.3.4 version]

2023-02-11T19:58:22Z

Hello Community, Overview This article provides information about the issue of emails being rejected as server configuration errors after upgrading the SEA to the 4.5.3.4 version. This applies to the following Sophos product(s) and version(s) Sophos ...(read more)

Sophos Email Appliance version 4.5.3.4 released

2023-02-02T16:56:37Z

Hi everyone, Sophos Email Appliance version 4.5.3.4 was released on February 2, 2023. Limited release Version 4.5.3.4 was released to an initial group of customers on February 2, 2023. This release will be made available to all customers over th...(read more)

Advisory: Sophos Email Appliance - Sophos Email Appliance failing Sandstorm Network Test

2021-01-22T19:58:00Z

Update - 1/27/2021 This issue has now been resolved. Overview Sophos Email Appliance is failing the network connectivity test for sandstorm Impact New devices can't complete the device configuration wizard, due to the failed test. Current status DE...(read more)

Advisory: Sophos Email Appliance - Support submissions from Appliances do not create Support cases

2020-12-07T17:22:00Z

Hi Community, It appears that users submitting Support requests via appliances do not get a case created at the moment. The email route works if used outside of the appliance but not from the Email or Web Appliance. We are investigating t...(read more)

Changes to appliance service IP addresses

2020-08-13T17:30:00Z

Note: Initially published August 13, 2020. Updated on January 8th, 2021

To improve the resiliency of the services that support Sophos Web and Email appliances, we are making some network infrastructure changes at our data centers. This requires IP address changes for services used by appliances. These changes are planned for January 23^rd, 2021 starting at 1100 EST / 1600 UTC

For most customers this should not be an issue. But if your appliances are deployed behind firewalls that limit outbound connections based on IP address, you may need to update your firewall rules.

Sophos has always recommended that if you do limit outbound connectivity for your appliances, you use DNS-based rules that are capable of adapting to changes in IP address. However, we are aware that some customers are unable to do this and have IP address-based rules in place.

Full details of the change are available in this Knowledge Base article: ACTS & SSH external IP address

Similar IP changes are also being made to the following products:

Sophos Email Appliance version 4.5.3.1 released

2020-07-22T16:26:00Z

Hi everyone,

Sophos Email Appliance version 4.5.3.1 has been released.

Limited release

Version 4.5.3.1 was released to an initial group of customers on July 22, 2020. This release will be made available to all customers over the next few weeks. If you would like to get early access to new features, please contact Sophos Support.

July 22, 2020

This release resolves several issues. The appliance will not restart after this update.

You should also familiarize yourself with the known issues, since improper configuration of certain options may cause unexpected behavior.

Before you begin installing and configuring the Email Appliance, you should review the configuration directions.

Internet Explorer 7 and later, and Mozilla Firefox version 4.x and later, are the only supported browsers for this product release. However, the Email Appliance has been optimized for current-generation browsers. If you are using an older browser such as Internet Explorer 6 and experience performance issues, consider upgrading to a newer version of Internet Explorer, or to a recent version of Firefox.

Issues resolved in the Sophos Email Appliance 4.5.3.1 release

Resolved an issue validating certificates issued by Sectigo (SEA-1706).
Disabled support for PureMessage-AntiSpam-Engine v2.7.2.2107409 (SEA-1715).

Reference: https://esa.sophos.com/rn/sea/concepts/ReleaseNotes_4.5.3.1.html

Sophos Email Appliance version 4.5.3.0 released

2020-01-13T02:27:00Z

Hi everyone,

Sophos Email Appliance version 4.5.3.0 has been released. This version resolves many issues of the previous version.

Limited release

Version 4.5.3.0 was released to an initial group of customers on 10 January 2020. This release will be made available to all customers over the next few weeks. If you would like to get early access to new features, please contact Sophos Support.

January 10, 2020

This release resolves several issues. The appliance will restart after this update.

You should also familiarize yourself with the known issues, since improper configuration of certain options may cause unexpected behaviour.

Before you begin installing and configuring the Email Appliance, you should review the configuration directions.

Issues Resolved in the Sophos Email Appliance 4.5.3.0 release

Resolved an issue with emails sent from one company with BATV (bounce address tag validation) enabled on its Sophos Email Appliance to another company using a Sophos Email Appliance. In cases like this, some policies were not triggered on the receiving company's email appliance (SEA-1147).
Resolved an issue with spam history being stored for outbound emails (SEA-1343).
Resolved an issue with certain mail headers generating false positives (SEA-1614).
Time of Click is no longer applied to emails that don't contain URLs (SEA-1197).
Resolved an issue where wildcards could not be used in addresses being added to automatically created User Groups (SEA-1565).
Resolved an issue where ciphers detected on port 5432 were causing PCI scan warnings (SEA-1588).
Resolved an issue where mail from known internal domains was classified as spam (SEA-1457).
Resolved an issue with message fragments getting stuck in the sandstorm rescan directory (SEA-751).
Resolved a Time of Click encoding issue when protocol prefix contains upper case letters. (SEA-1438).
Chinese and Japanese characters displayed correctly in lists of quarantined emails (SEA-1015).
Resolved an issue where emails containing attachments with .AAX extensions were not being detected by the email appliance (SEA-1543).

Updates and enhancements in the Sophos Email Appliance 4.5.3.0 release

Increased resilience against Secure Client-Initiated Renegotiation DoS attacks (SEA-290).
Improved functionality of the configuration backup function (SEA-1571).
Improved milter to handle emails with large numbers of header lines (SEA-1605).
Improvements made to the IP address reputation checking tool (SEA-1246).
Improvements made to the Time of Click functionality (SEA-1533).

Sophos Email Appliance version 4.5.2.2 released

2019-12-18T13:14:00Z

Hi everyone,

Sophos Email Appliance version 4.5.2.2 has been released. This version resolves an issue with appliances not connecting to sandbox.sophos.com.

Limited release

Version 4.5.2.2 was released to an initial group of customers on 11 December, 2019. This release will be made available to all customers over the next few weeks. If you would like to get early access to new features, please contact Sophos Support.

December 11, 2019

This release resolves one issue. The appliance will not restart after this update.

You should also familiarize yourself with the known issues, since improper configuration of certain options may cause unexpected behavior.

Before you begin installing and configuring the Email Appliance, you should review the configuration directions.

Issues resolved in the Sophos Email Appliance 4.5.2.2 release

Resolved an issue with appliances not connecting to sandbox.sophos.com (SEA-1613).

DMARC now available on the Sophos Email Appliance 4.3.0

2018-02-12T03:22:00Z

News: Version update

Overview

Email address forgery, better known as spoofing, is one of the most common tactics in spam and phishing emails today, and a common challenge for organisations of all sizes. We are happy to announce that the Sophos Email Appliance version 4.3.0 now includes Domain-based Messaging and Reporting Compliance (DMARC) to help block this fraudulent email activity.

In order to reduce spoofing and provide a safer user experience, Sophos Email Appliance has supported SPF authentication (Sender Policy Framework), and inbound validation of DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) for some time. Now every Email appliance includes Domain-based Messaging and Reporting Compliance (DMARC). Together these technologies check for trusted authenticated senders and help identify untrusted ones that that fail authentication.

Administrators can now leverage Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Message (DKIM) protocols for IP address and encrypted key authentication, with a DMARC policy providing the receiving domain with guidance on what to do if an email – a phishing attempt for instance – fails these tests.

Creating a DMARC policy is simple in the Sophos Email Appliance. Available in the wizard-based policy builder, with optional aggregate reports to the domain owner:

Remarks

Updates will be automatically applied to both virtual and physical hardware appliances
Any custom settings will be unaffected by the change
Systems will not require a reboot following the appliance update

Release of Sophos Email Appliance 4.2.2 has begun

2017-10-17T03:47:00Z

News:

Version update

Overview of Sophos Email Appliance 4.2.2 release:

The rollout of the Sophos Email Appliance version 4.2.2 has started, this marks first phase in our goal of a single anti-spam engine for all Sophos email solutions. Sophos Email Appliance version 4.2.2 incorporates the latest Sophos Anti-Spam engine as well as improvements to Sophos Delay Queue scanning to improve protection against snowshoe spam.

Full release notes available here

Remarks:

The release will be staged with the completion of all upgrades expected to take between 2-3 weeks
User experience and any custom settings will be unaffected by the change
Systems will not require a reboot following the appliance update
As well as improvements to Anti-Spam techniques, this release will also include a change to the Email Appliance update process (HTTPS as opposed to HTTP). To ensure the update functionality of the Sophos Email Appliance, please configure your network to allow access on the new ports highlighted below in red:

Port	Function	Service	Protocol	Connection
80, 443	Software downloads	HTTP, HTTPS	TCP	[Required] Outbound from appliance to internet

If you are using a third party web proxy with HTTPS scanning enabled, please exempt the following Sophos URLs from HTTPS scanning. This will prevent any errors when updating the Sophos Email Appliance:

The official Sophos article is available here: https://community.sophos.com/kb/en-us/127433

Sophos Email Appliance 4.2 staged release begins: New anti-spam engine

2017-01-16T05:40:00Z

Today we begin the release of Sophos Email Appliance 4.2 for all customers, the first phase in our goal of a single anti-spam engine for all Sophos email solutions. This is a staged release that will be automatically applied over approximately the next 4-6 weeks.

News:

Version update

Remarks

Updates will be automatically applied to both virtual and physical hardware appliances
The release will be staged with the completion of all upgrades expected to take between 4-6 weeks
User experience and any custom settings will be unaffected by the change
Systems will not require a reboot following the appliance update

Read the full article here

Sophos Email Appliance 4.2 coming soon: New anti-spam engine

2016-12-21T06:41:00Z

We’re pleased to announce that all Sophos Email Appliance customers will soon benefit from the latest generation of the Sophos anti-spam engine (SASI 3.0). Launched with release 4.2 of Sophos Email Appliance in January 2017, it marks the first phase in our goal of a single anti-spam engine for all Sophos email solutions.

How you’ll benefit?

The benefit comes from the single anti-spam engine for all email product lines. Once completed, the consolidation of Sophos technologies will give us valuable efficiencies as we focus on providing a single market-leading engine.

To enable this vision, the engine has been completely rebuilt to consume less physical resources and allow us to provide more frequent updates for end-users.

When will the update take place?

The update is expected in the second week of January 2017. Updates will be automatically applied to both virtual and physical hardware appliances, with the completion of all upgrades expected to take between 6-8 weeks.

During the update users will experience no disruption to services and both the user experience and any custom settings will be unaffected by the change.