From 1st November 2021, Smoothwall's Monitor systems in the UK, and Signal in the US, will stop accepting connections from clients using TLS 1.0 and 1.1.
This means that students on Windows 7 clients may no longer be protected.
Our recommendations:
You're using Windows10 exclusively
Do nothing, your systems are up to date, and Smoothwall software will continue to work
You're using Windows 8 on any student systems
Put a note in your diary to check everything's still working. We expect it will, and our tests indicate that it will, but legacy operating systems aren't always easy to reproduce, so it would be a great idea to check that your systems are still working.
You're using Windows 7
Check out Microsoft's article here: Update to enable TLS 1.1 and TLS 1.2 as default secure protocols in WinHTTP in Windows (microsoft.com)
You should be able to fix this by running the easy fix MSI linked in the above article (also here)
How to test?
Make sure the systems you are worried about appear on the dashboard at https://portal.smoothwall.cloud - systems should check in at least once every 24h, so once the Nov 1st deadline has passed, ensure that systems are still checking in. If you're in any doubt, please do raise a ticket.
Windows 8 was EOL in 2016, and Windows 7 in January 2020, so we hope you can help us ensure students on these systems are still protected, and we're glad to be able to keep offering a level of help for users with legacy OS.