Sophos Retires Intercept X Essentials

Graeme D Anderson

Sophos has officially confirmed the retirement of its Intercept X Essentials product line, with all customers being migrated to its next‑generation Sophos Endpoint Protection offering. This change affects both user and server licenses. This forms part of a wider strategic shift where Sophos is consolidating legacy licensing and strengthening its unified cloud‑managed cybersecurity platform.

What You Gain with the New Sophos Endpoint Protection

While the retirement of a familiar product may cause disruption, the transition brings meaningful upgrades. Customers moving from Intercept X Essentials to the new Sophos Endpoint protection stack benefit from:

1. Stronger AI‑Driven Threat Detection

Sophos has enhanced its threat‑monitoring engine with deeper machine‑learning capabilities designed to identify novel malware and advanced attack techniques earlier. These technologies are core to the “next‑gen” product line recommended as the replacement.

2. Expanded Anti‑Ransomware Capabilities

Sophos’ modern endpoint solutions continue to strengthen anti‑ransomware protections, offering behaviour‑based detection to stop fast‑moving encryption attacks before they spread. Intercept X Essentials included effective protection, but the new offering builds on this foundation with more comprehensive response capability.

3. Improved Endpoint and Server Integration

Both user and server endpoints migrate to aligned, modern Sophos Endpoint products. This simplifies policy management and ensures consistent security configurations across your environment. The updated products are fully managed via Sophos Central, the unified cloud console.

4. Access to Ongoing Feature Enhancements

As legacy lines are retired, Sophos is concentrating updates, upgrades, and innovations on its newer platforms. Features such as improved exploit prevention, deeper telemetry, and tighter ecosystem integration are available only in the newer Endpoint releases.

Why the Change Is Good for Security

Cyberthreats have evolved significantly in recent years, and Sophos is prioritising capabilities that defend against targeted attacks, zero‑day exploits, and sophisticated ransomware. By migrating to the new Endpoint protection suite, organisations receive:

  • More advanced behavioural detection
  • Better threat response workflows
  • Unified and simplified management
  • A future‑proof, continuously updated platform

These upgrades provide a stronger foundation for businesses of all sizes — including those previously using the more lightweight Intercept X Essentials tier.

 

Will There Be a Price Increase?

In most cases, customers should expect a small price increase when transitioning to the new product line. This is due to the addition of enhanced security capabilities that were not included in Intercept X Essentials. We aim to make this transition as smooth as possible – clients will automatically transition Sophos Endpoint Protection without disruption to their operation. We’re here to ensure the move to the new Sophos Endpoint solution is straightforward. Contact us to discuss your options and migration path.

 

Final Thoughts

The retirement of Sophos Intercept X Essentials marks a significant step in the company’s transition to a consolidated, more powerful endpoint protection ecosystem. While change can be disruptive, the good news is that the replacement product delivers stronger security, smoother management, and long‑term support — essential in today’s fast‑moving threat landscape.

If you’re an existing or new customer and would like personalised guidance, feel free to contact us. We’ll ensure you get the most out of your upgraded protection with minimal fuss.

Business Continuity Plan – COVID-19 Notice (Last updated 28/03/2020)

Graeme D Anderson

** Last updated 11:02, 28/03/2020

Stay Safe from Fraudsters

We have had various clients report examples of malicious emails regarding the COVID-19 outbreak. Now more than ever it is important to remain vigilant of any telephone call or email you receive asking you to divulge any personal or security information. Particularly with the increased use of home working on personal devices that may not have the same security in place as corporate IT systems.

Please be especially alert at this time. Check out these tips from Google to help protect yourself from fraudsters!

Service Continuity

Following current global events we have put processes in place to ensure our help-desk, commercial and technical personnel are able to operate from home, with immediate notice. Our remote workers have access to all core systems meaning there should be no impact to our service delivery. Scheduled onsite service visits may be impacted but we are continually reviewing this on a case-by-case basis following Government guidelines and will be contacting affected clients in due course. Our core business systems including e-mail, helpdesk/backoffice and telecom systems are all resilient systems designed to be deployed and accessed from any remote location to facilitate continued service delivery.

Where we need to schedule customer meetings or client discussion our policy until further notice we will be to conduct these by telephone or by using collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams.

IT Support

Demand for IT support and remote working solutions from our existing client base has been exceptionally high. In order to facilitate continued service and support, we would ask that should you require assistance clients follow the below process:

Log all requests by email to support@boxportable.com or log a ticket via our website https://www.boxportable.com/support-request/. There is no requirement to copy in individual support contacts / account contacts to these emails or send duplicate requests as this will delay a response. Your request will be reviewed and prioritised based on severity and SLA entitlement – we are working hard to ensure all service level agreements are met for contracted clients.

We will continue to operate telephone support during normal business hours – but would ask that you restrict this to business-critical incidents to allow us to operate an efficient call back service. You can reach us on our normal office number – 01224 54 54 54.

Please note we understand fully this is a difficult/stressful time for both employers and employees and we are working hard to ensure business continuity and support for all our clients. We continue to adopt a zero-tolerance policy towards employee harassment/verbal abuse and as such reserve the right to decline support/terminate any call during should any personnel be subjected to this.

We will continue to operate during our normal business hours Monday to Friday 08.30 -17.30. Should this need to change – advance notice will be posted online and advised in writing to our clients.

Preventative Measures

All staff have been advised to adhere to best practice guidelines for minimising the transmission of infectious diseases in the workplace as well as being reminded of their responsibilities including notifying management should they display any signs of Coronavirus symptoms – upon which we will implement a period of enforced self-isolation/remote working.  Those staff members in the ‘at-risk’ category are now already operating in self isolation working remotely. We have also advised staff to avoid close contact with both clients and co-workers as well as avoiding handshakes or physical contact.

Client Obligations

You must inform us immediately if any of your staff show symptoms or test positive for COVID-19. We commit to communicate the same to any client that has come into contact with a staff member who is later diagnosed with COVID-19.

Remote Working Solutions

Following the latest UK Government advice regarding Coronavirus (COVID-19) all key workers are strongly urged to stay and home and avoid travel unless absolutely necessary. We can provide a number of home working solutions to facilitate continued access to your IT systems. Please contact us to discuss and plan your requirement.

IT Hardware Availability

We have a small amount of stock available for immediate dispatch – consisting of notebook / laptop computers as well as ‘all-in-one’ workstation PCs available ready for immediate setup and deployment. Please contact us for updated availability, specifications and pricing.

DocuSign Spoof Emails – detect and prevent secure document phishing attacks

Graeme D Anderson

DocuSign have admitted they were the victim of a data breach that has led to massive phishing attacks using the compromised DocuSign user data. Secure document phishing attacks are some of the latest in client endpoint exploits that to the unsuspecting user can have serious repercussions. This latest hack resulted in a 3rd party gaining unauthorised access to a list of email addresses stored on an unsecured DocuSign platform – other than this no private user account data was accessed, however this has resulted in a significant volume of ‘spoof’ DocuSign emails being sent to these users in an attempt to trick recipients into opening an attached Word or PDF document that, when clicked, installs malicious software.

The attackers hit a “non-core system that allows us to communicate service-related announcements to users via email”, the company said in a blog post on the incident.

DocuSign have released the following helpful guidance:

What should I do if I receive a suspicious email?

First and foremost, if you don’t recognise the sender of a DocuSign envelope and you are uncertain of the authenticity of an email, look for the unique security code at the bottom of the notification email. All DocuSign envelopes include a unique security code.

If you think that you have received a fraudulent email, please forward the email to spam@docusign.com, then delete the email.

Please check out the DocuSign Trust Center for the most up-to-date information about personal security and review our whitepaper on phishing.

If there is a security code…

  • Access your documents directly from www.docusign.com, click Access Documents then enter the unique security code.

If there is NO security code…

  • DO NOT click on links or open attachments within the email. This is not a valid DocuSign email and it should be sent to our security team immediately at spam@docusign.com

IMPORTANT: If you did click on a link and provided your DocuSign credentials, please be sure to change your password immediately to ensure the security of your account.

Please update and run antivirus immediately to ensure the security of your system or contact your IT support provider for immediate assistance.

When the chips are down…. Intel processor security flaws – what you need to know!

Graeme D Anderson



F**CKWIT, aka KAISER, aka KPTI, Meltdown & Spectre – Intel CPU flaw needs low-level OS patches.

A fundamental design flaw in Intel’s processor chips has forced a significant redesign of the Linux and Windows kernels to resolve the chip-level security bug. Similar operating systems, such as Apple’s 64-bit macOS, will also need to be updated – the flaw is in the Intel hardware and the only was to fix it is at the Operating System level – or worst case to be totally sure you can go buy a new processor without the design fault. Unchanged: A fundamental design flaw in Intel’s processor chips has forced a significant redesign of the Linux and Windows kernels to resolve the chip-level security bug. Similar operating systems, such as Apple’s 64-bit macOS, will also need to be updated – the flaw is in the Intel hardware and the only was to fix it is at the Operating System level – or worst case to be totally sure you can go buy a new processor without the design fault.

Microsoft have already released an update which will automatically be applied to Windows 10 machines. For users running any other Operating System we recommend you manually check and apply any pending system updates to ensure you are protected. Antivirus providers are also reacting by releasing software updates to combat any potential risks from the newly discovered flaw. Unchanged: Microsoft have already released an update which will automatically be applied to Windows 10 machines. For users running any other Operating System we recommend you manually check and apply any pending system updates to ensure you are protected. Antivirus providers are also reacting by releasing software updates to combat any potential risks from the newly discovered flaw.

If you run Sophos (our recommended security software) then you are already protected as updates were released on January 5th. You can read more here – https://community.sophos.com/kb/en-us/128053