What is TLS and how does it affect me?

What is TLS and how does it affect me?

Data security is the foundation of everything we do at Zoho Desk. We take security very seriously and have developed a comprehensive set of practices, technologies, and policies to help ensure your data is secure. With the same perspective and to continue to offer a secure means of communication to our servers, Zoho Desk has upgraded its systems and application to accept Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.2.

TLS 1.0/1.1 Deactivation
We completed disabling support for TLS v1.0 and v1.1 on all user interface endpoints on May 15, 2019. After this date, we will no longer support communications made with the TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 protocols. While this change does not affect the majority of Zoho Desk users, a very small percentage may be impacted if your browser is not updated. Please refer to the "What actions you should take" section below to prepare yourselves and your customers for the same.

What is TLS?
The Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol enables secure communications over a computer network by authenticating the data that is passed between the web server and the connected browser. For example, when you enter your login credentials on Zoho Desk, TLS prevents a third-party from stealing the information that is exchanged during the login process.

Why Upgrade?
First and foremost, your customer's data is at risk. This is because the older versions of TLS don't meet security standards and are vulnerable to various types of attacks without any viable solutions. Second, you cannot access the Zoho Desk application since its usage requires TLS 1.2 as a minimum.

What actions you should take
Users of TLS versions 1.0 and 1.1, should take the following actions as a safety precaution.

Check the TLS version of your web browser
It is important to ensure that your web browsers are up-to-date. Most browsers have supported TLS 1.2 for some time, but if you haven't updated your browser to the latest version, then you may be impacted by this upgrade. So please ensure you access Zoho Desk through one of the compatible browser versions listed below:
  1. Google Chrome, version 49 and above
  2. Mozilla Firefox, version 44 and above
  3. Safari, version 9 and above
  4. Opera, version 45 and above
  5. Microsoft Edge – all versions

Check the TLS version of your mobile OS
If you access Zoho Desk through our mobile apps, please ensure you are on the following versions of the mobile platform:
  1. Google Android, version 4.1 and above
  2. iOS, version 5.1 and above
  3. Windows phone, version 8.1 and above

Check the TLS version of your development environments
If you are using any of the following programming languages, you need to update them to communicate with our API effectively:
  1. Java 6u45
  2. Java 7u25
  3. OpenSSL 0.9.8y
  4. .NET 4.5 and below
  5. .NET 4.5 (settings should be changed to enable TLS 1.2)

Check the TLS version of your phonebridge environments
If you are a PhoneBridge adapter user, please make sure you are using the latest Java version (Java 8) in the machine/server where you have installed our PhoneBridge adapter.

Frequently Asked Questions
  1. How does TLS affect my end users?
    Zoho Desk's security compliance standards require your end users to access the following services using modern web browsers (refer, Check the TLS version of your web browser section) that support TLS 1.2.

    • Help Centers
    • Web-to-ticket Forms
    • Feedback Widgets
    • ASAP

    Also, the following error screen is seen by end users while accessing the services over older browsers:



If you have any questions, please contact our support team.

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