Is Sophos Central free?? Locked out do to authentication issue after activating Sophos Central Trial account.

With the AP access points going EOL next year, users are saying that they will only be managed through Sophos Central if using the XG firewall. People here say it's free, but customer support wants me to "chat" with them over price, I'm a home user so I don't want to be haggled by a salesman. So I'm a bit confused. Even I can't get an answer by searching around the internet.

What is the purpose of this obscurity?



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[edited by: Gladys at 6:47 AM (GMT -8) on 1 Dec 2022]
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  • I'm having severe problems even logging into my Sophos Central account. It sends me verification code then asks for my PIN which I don't know.

    then I try with a second account and it says there is a password verification error, then when I click "forgot password" I am redirected to a blank page in Chrome.

    Sophos Central won't even load on firefox, it says "Hmmm, we're having trouble finding that site"

    Either there's some shadow ban happening due to me having a second account but logging in from the same IP address, or there is something wrong with the site itself. So far I have tried using two separate email accounts and both are not working.

    There is no way to create new password when I don't know the PIN.

    rI can confirm that Sophos Central will not load in Edge browser either.

  • It sounds like you will need an MFA reset to be done on your account so you can set up authentication again.

    The site not loading may be due to something else, however, our team can assist if you need help with the pin when logging in. 

    I suggest opening a support case by signing up for the Support Portal. Another way you can get assistance is by giving our team a call using the regional contact numbers under "For Critical Cases".

    If you are asked for a license number, let the team know that you are currently evaluating the product and have a trial set up. I will send you a private message with some additional information you can share with the team.

    Kushal Lakhan
    Team Lead, Global Community Support
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  • So far this is becoming a comedy of errors that doesn't have to exist.

    When I go to the support portal it tells me I am a home user so I am redirected to the home user support portal where it asks me to log in to my account. I have tried two different emails and am given a message saying "The email address or password you entered is incorrect or the account does not exist."

    When I enter my email address to receive a link to reset my password, I receive no link at all in my email.

    Then another page states that home users cannot open support tickets and instead must use the Sophia support dashboard which again prompts me to enter my passwords which results in the error saying BOTH email address are incorrect or not found.

    The only way around this is call the support hotline because apparently this is a catch-22 situation where I "forgot" my password but I need to know my password in order to chat with tech support to get a new password.

  • Here is what happens when I click the link to the support contact number...

  • First of all: Do you have a Central Account already setup for this Email Address? This is the first important question.

    Unfortunately, Sophos moved a while ago (2019) from a old provider to a new provider (Azure AD) for the MFA part. This caused some old accounts to break, if they were unused for some years. Therefore, if you account was created but never used for some years, it could get in this down spiral of errors. 

    I am recommending to creating a new account, setup everything fresh and check then. 

    You have to create a Central Account, not a mySophos Account: 

    www.sophos.com/.../free-trial

    You can also use this link with your currently existing Email and check, if you get an registration Email.

    The Problem is: SophosID, which is used for everything, is just a base of data. But Central needs something like datacenter, MFA etc. This was not used in SophosID, therefore if you try to access with SophosID Central, but Central "does not know your account, because it never exists" it will throw such errors. 

    __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

  • Yes, I have a Sophos Central account. When I attempt to log in I am taken to the dashboard where I am immediately logged out and displayed with a prompt to sign into my Sophos ID which I cannot do. I also receive an email  message saying 

    It asks for my PIN which i do not know. When I then try to change my MFA  I get yet another error.

  • Are you using bookmarks to get there? When they moved to the new provider, I had a week or so where I couldn't login and was pretty upset until I tried going there without using a bookmark... and it just worked. The (old) bookmark sent me someplace that seemed to want to work, but it's not the current setup. Of course, now that I'm accessing the right site and it works, I've made new bookmarks, but just wondering in your case...

  • No I'm just using the links I am given. I might have to create a new account like Lucar Tony suggested. It is just ridiculous how many accounts you need for this software. Crazy. So far I have an account for

    1. myUTM

    2. sophos community

    3. Sophos Central (that I created a second time a few days ago using a gmail account) which is not working anymore.

    Now I need to create

    4. A Sophos Home account to access the home user support  and a

    5. Sophos Central "free trial" to be able to use Sophos Central Wireless when my AP becomes functionally obsolete next year if I want to use it with XG in the future.

    I chatted with sophos central support who told me to use Sophia, but I had to register first, and Sophia was telling me to do the same thing the sites were. Guess I'll have to create a whole new account. And hope for the best.

  • Yes, it's frustrating in some sense. It is sort of crazy that there's a mySophos (download firmware sooner after release than it might be made available to you via the appliance) and Sophos Central. They really should be merged.

    Of course, Sophos could just obsolete your AP which is at least a generation behind current (soon to be two generations), as many manufacturers might. Or maybe "not guarantee" support and drop it, so that you can't point to a hard deadline. And UTM is a totally distinct product from SFOS. And Sophos Home is essentially a commercial-grade tool that's free -- I don't think there's a Fortinet Home, Cisco Home, or PAN Home out there.

    I do believe that Sophos Community and Sophos Central share the same login, though I might be wrong since it's all in a password keeper and maybe it's just a shared user name (the part I see) that's possible

    Anyhow, hope you get it sorted out.