Sophos Firewall Enhanced Support

Sophos Enhanced Support gives you a contact for technical problems with your firewall. Support is available 24/7, including public holidays, by email and telephone for covered technical issues.

What you need to know

Enhanced Support does not include free configuration of your firewall by Sophos. Open a support ticket when a firewall feature appears to be malfunctioning. General configuration training and implementation are outside the scope of Sophos technical support. For configuration assistance, contact Avanet: we can help under our own support terms.

Incident priorities and response targets

Sophos Enhanced Support assigns incident priorities based on urgency and business impact. These priorities clarify the support response you can expect for different types of issue. Incident priorities are defined as follows:

• P1 – Critical: for a critical system outage or another incident severely affecting operations, Sophos targets an initial response within 1 hour.
• P2 – High: for a serious but non-critical incident affecting operations, Sophos targets a response within 2 hours.
• P3 – Medium: for a non-critical incident restricting operations, Sophos targets a response within 8 business hours.
• P4 – Low: for low-priority incidents or general enquiries, Sophos targets a response within 24 business hours.

See the Sophos incident-priority page for detailed definitions and response targets.

Escalation process

If you are dissatisfied with the support provided, Sophos Enhanced Support offers an escalation process. Request escalation by emailing the support team or through the support portal.

Escalation provides an additional route for reviewing unresolved concerns.

Firmware updates

Sophos Enhanced Support gives your firewall access to firmware updates. These updates maintain the firewall’s functionality and address security and performance issues. New releases can also add features to your firewall.

Enhanced Support covers firmware and feature updates; pattern updates for security services depend on the relevant active subscriptions. Pattern updates are installed automatically. Installing releases with new features or bug fixes requires administrator action. Security hotfixes are installed automatically unless the default automatic installation setting has been disabled.

Extended warranty cover

Sophos Firewall hardware has a standard 1-year manufacturer warranty, starting when Sophos processes the partner’s order. Covered hardware defects during this period are handled under Sophos warranty terms. The standard manufacturer warranty expires after this period. With continuous active Enhanced Support, extended replacement cover applies during the contract term and within the supported hardware lifecycle. If cover has lapsed for more than 30 days, a three-month waiting period for replacement hardware may apply unless reinstatement fees are paid.

Advance replacement after hardware failure

Advance replacement for covered hardware failures is part of Sophos Enhanced Support, subject to the applicable contract and warranty terms. For an approved warranty claim, Sophos provides a replacement device. Shipping is handled on a best-effort basis after RMA approval; next-business-day dispatch depends on the applicable conditions and does not guarantee delivery within a fixed period. For instructions on opening a support case or RMA, see: How do I open a support ticket with Sophos?

Allow time for shipping

Please allow for replacement processing and shipping: these can take at least 2–3 business days. For critical environments, we recommend a high-availability cluster.

Enhanced Support included in bundles

Sophos Enhanced Support is included in these licence bundles:

• Standard Protection
• Xstream Protection
• Epic Protection

When purchasing only the Sophos Firewall appliance, you can add Enhanced Support separately.

Why was the term shortened when I activated my licence key?

When activating Enhanced Support, or a bundle containing it, after the firewall’s warranty coverage has expired, Sophos may shorten the new subscription term to account for the gap in coverage. Sophos applies a fair-value calculation based on the Enhanced Support value to close the gap, capped at six months. For example, if an Enhanced Support subscription expired two months before renewal, the new term is shortened by two months. For a bundle containing Enhanced Support, the bundle term is reduced by the number of days corresponding to the value of the missing Enhanced Support cover. Calculations use the USD list price.