What's Happening?

We have upgraded the Swiftmailer version used on on our on-premise servers in version 2019.7. This allows  support for encrypted connections over TLS versions 1.1 and 1.2 when connecting into external mail accounts. This would cover all standard IMAP/POP3, SMTP and EWS (Exchange) connections.

Why are we doing this? 

Due to popular demand, and to keep ourselves compliant with industry standard security protocols. Microsoft Office365 (Exchange) have have issued some warnings that they will be discontinuing connections using TLS 1.0 in June 2020 - we want to keep a step ahead for our clients using this mail platform. Other service providers are likely to be following suit.

What will I need to do? 

Nothing, apart from update your software to take advantage of the upgraded encryption protocols. Once upgraded, the system will use the latest encryption version supported by your mail server.

This will not affect any existing mail connections which may be limited to older forms of encryption technology, this is just an enhancement to increase wider support.

Further reading.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/troubleshoot/security/prepare-tls-1.2-in-office-365