Spring has sprung, and with it comes our quarterly release of Halon Protect VM: 5.15. It brings an updated, fresh look to the web-based user administration interface, and adds an ACME client for easier use of Let’s Encrypt TLS certificates.

Let’s Encrypt - a renowned free, automated, and open Certificate Authority (CA) - has helped drive the widespread adoption of transport encryption, by making SSL/TLS certificates accessible to everyone at zero cost. By embedding Let’s Encrypt directly into our email software, we’re streamlining the management of certificate renewals, making it even more convenient than ever before. Although CA-signed certificates aren't necessary for secure MTA-to-MTA communication with DANE, they are compulsory for ensuring secure email client MUA-to-MTA communication. 

The web administration user interface has undergone a transformation, improving user experience and sporting a sleek, modernized look that aligns with the other projects, such as the self-service portal MSUI and the Linux package’s web administration. The redesign is a first step towards bringing dark mode to the user interface. Because let’s face it, who doesn’t love a bit of darkness? 🌙 Stay tuned.

The quarterly release also comes with many other smaller improvements and fixes as described in the full changelog. Unlike the Linux version, the VM package is a full operating system image based on FreeBSD. The release updates the FreeBSD base system, has the latest quarterly FreeBSD packages, as well as the latest version of the anti-spam/virus engines from Sophos and Eleven.

We hope that you will enjoy this new quarterly release and find it to be a valuable addition. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions!