Older versions of Sophos UTM prior to version 9.706 (released May 2021) use third-party email anti-spam technology from a vendor who recently indicated that they may be ceasing operations imminently.
If you are running a recent version of the Sophos UTM firmware (9.706 or later), or not using email anti-spam, you do not need to take any action.
To avoid any disruption to your anti-spam filtering protection, we recommend that you upgrade any Sophos UTM (SG) devices running an older version to the latest Sophos UTM release (v9.714) immediately. Instructions for updating firmware can be found in the Sophos UTM Administration Guide.
What will happen if you don't update?
In the event of a disruption to the services provided by the third-party vendor, customers still using anti-spam filtering on older versions may experience the following:
- All messages will continue to be forwarded/delivered but spam messages will not be filtered
- There may be delays of up to 20 seconds in forwarding messages due to the system timing out while waiting for a response from the anti-spam service
- Mail server IP reputation checks will also be affected, but checks to other configured RBL services will continue
We will keep this post up to date as we learn more.
As a best practice, we strongly encourage you to keep all devices upgraded to the latest available firmware release to ensure that they have all the essential security, performance, reliability and operational fixes.