Sophos Central Update Deployment Rings

I'd also be interested in this idea or any official statement from Sophos around how it manages the recommended update cadence to ensure customers are not exposed to a similar issue?  

I am also interested.

Due to the current situation, a community news article or a KBA would be a good idea instead of explaining this somewhere in the depths of the forum.

I'm also interested. Like mentioned above, we could come up with a fairly convoluted structure with Update Management policies, but having the ability to manage security updates, segments, and the like would be fantastic.

Hi itskdog,

Thanks for reaching out to the Sophos Community Forum. 

The link below provides detailed information on Sophos' releases and development principles. This gives insight into how testing is conducted and how releases are rolled out to our customers to ensure that any major issues are caught early on and corrected. 
- Sophos Central Endpoint: Release and development principles

Regarding the ability to control how updates are rolled out across your sites, the Software packages/Update Management feature is the best way to do this. The "Recommended" release group will always receive the latest updates. The remainder of the site can be left on the latest FTS release. 
Currently, the FTS releases will remain static. It's not possible to specify "Recommended -1", though if you would like to send this as a feature request, I'd be happy to assist. 

If you'd like to stay in the loop about the latest product releases/changes, you can also enroll a small number of devices in our Early Access Programs so you have a better idea of what features and functionality will become available. I'd suggest turning on notifications for the relevant Release Notes & News pages here on the Sophos Community to stay up to date. 

Edit/Update:
Additional information can be found at the following link, including the section "What does Sophos do to"mitigate the risk of having a similar service disruption?" found near the bottom of the article. 
CrowdStrike global outage: Sophos guidance

Hello Kushal,

Thank you for the information. I will submit a feature request for the option to define a time-delayed rollout of updates in the policies. Maybe other customers will also join this feature request.

I can't see the option here to send a feature request in the Sophos Central category, the "New" button just makes a new discussion thread like this one.

I will send you a direct message to help with this. Feature requests are typically handled directly through Sophos Support or your Sophos Account team. Sophos Community staff can also assist. 

I am slightly confused by the versioning reported if you take the recommended updates vs the FTS as the most recent FTS seems to show more recent version numbers e.g. 

Recommended:

FTS 2024.2.2.6.1-MR1

Am I missing something obvious?

The MR# packages you see are "Maintenance Releases". These are typically made available to address specific issues that customers may encounter. The MR packages will change and get updated as time goes on, so any urgent hotfixes or bugfixes are made more easily accessible.

If stability is the primary concern, I'd suggest only using the MR packages if advised by Sophos Support. You can also go to "Package Notes" page to find more details on what changes to expect with the given MR package, to see if it is suitable for you. 

Depending on the time the latest MR package is made available, these can show a later version than the "Recommended" release.

The Sophos News page has a great writeup at the link below. I suggest subscribing using the options near the bottom of the page to stay up to date on any important publications. 
-CrowdStrike global outage: Sophos guidance