Is there a set of circumstances where a dead battery on a laptop will trigger a Sophos Lockout?

Hello MWestbrook,

Yes a dead battery or replacing the battery will typically cause the machine to go into a protection state where it locks out the user.
You'll likely get asked for a challenge/response or recovery key depending on your encryption method.

Following up,

Is there a technical reason for this design?  It's creating a huge amount of support work.

More so,

Can I turn that off, patch, hotfix or whatever to address this?

Hi MWestbrook,

This is a standard security feature and can't be disabled - users can enable notifications for when their batteries run low, plus if you have the SafeGuard Web Helpdesk enabled the users in question can perform their own recoveries.

A laptop draining a battery and becoming useless is not a feature.

A laptop draining a battery and becoming useless is not a feature.

No, but detecting changes to a machines persistent state and locking up the machine accordingly is.

The laptop isn't useless, as per my last email, the laptop can be instantly booted up using challenge / response or with the recovery key depending on the encryption method.

Ofcourse the biggest question is why you're allowing the machines to run flat in the first place.

If you're still not convinced feel free to call in and I'll explain to you how all this works, you can reach me at the Sophos UK head office (+44 (0)1235 559933) and I'll very much look forward to your call.