On the 30th June 2018 the PCI Security Standards Council rolled out new regulations which have left millions of people who are not using up to date software with various issues with email, online payment systems and card payment terminals.
You can read more technical details about the changes on the official PCI security Standards Website here https://blog.pcisecuritystandards.org/are-you-ready-for-30-june-2018-sayin-goodbye-to-ssl-early-tls
What has changed?
All connections to our servers and those of any reputable hosting company are connected over SSL connections to ensure traffic is encrypted and secure from your devices to our servers. The protocol that carries this traffic is called TLS. On the 30th June 2018 an old version of TLS 1.0 was made redundant due to known security weaknesses and was replaced with newer versions of the protocol TLS 1.1 and TLS 1.2.
Because of this change which is affecting service providers around the world, servers have been patched and updated to support newer TLS 1.1 and TLS 1.2 protocols and removed support for TLS 1.0.
How does this affect me?
As a hosting service provider, we must ensure we stay up to date with all security regulations and standards on our servers. Our servers were updated to meet these new standards and we have received an increase in number of issues reported with email services.
Unfortunately, these issues are out of our control, but we have prepared this article to provide you with accurate information regarding the cause of the problems and alternative options.
Who is affected by these changes?
Not everyone is affected by these new changes and so far, we have narrowed down the affected clients we have seen first hand to those using older software or operating systems which don’t support the newer security standards.
We know some people using Windows 7 and Windows 8 have been affected as well as some people on older versions of Mac OSX and even older versions of iOS software on iPhone and iPads.
What can I do if I’m affected?
There is little we can do if you are affected by the new security standards and you are using older software. This is a security standard change that is affecting millions of users across the globe on older software.
Our recommendations
We have pulled together some helpful information that you can look through yourself to see if you can resolve the issue without having to spend money on support. Unfortunately, some software simply won’t be fixable if it is out of date.
- If you are running Windows 7 or Windows 8 please visit the official Microsoft support article which details the security protocol changes – https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/3140245/update-to-enable-tls-1-1-and-tls-1-2-as-a-default-secure-protocols-in.
- If you are running Windows 7 or Windows 8 you will need to upgrade your operating system to Windows 10 which includes all of the security patches and fixes necessary.
- If you are running Mac OSX please make sure you are on the very latest version of Mac OSX which should be a free upgrade and we have had reports that the latest Mac OSX has included a patch to support newer TLS protocols.
- If you are facing issues on mobile devices, please make sure they are fully up to date as again patches have been released for most mobile devices.
What can I do If I am still having problems?
We first recommend you contact your IT provider as this is an IT/Software issue and not a service/server related issue we can control. Our servers have simply been updated to comply with these latest security standard changes.
If you would like us to provide you with this IT/Software support, we can do so under a maintenance contract. Unfortunately, some older software simply isn’t fixable, and you will be limited with what you can do.
In these circumstances you will either need to switch to webmail in the interim or look at upgrading your computer software to the latest versions such as Windows 10 or Mac OSX High Sierra.
How do I access webmail?
You can access your email via your webmail portal by visiting [yourdomain.com/webmail] in your internet browser such as Google Chrome, Firefox or internet explorer. You will need to enter your email address and password.
If you need to request a password reset, please log a ticket on our client portal here https://clients.eckhomedia.co.uk.
