Effective Date: December 15, 2025
Applies To: All organizations receiving email from FedConnect
What’s Changing?
We will be upgrading FedConnect’s mail server infrastructure to a more secure and compliant version, with FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards) mode enabled, to support alignment with enhanced protocol and security requirements. As part of this upgrade, FedConnect email systems will adopt stricter security protocols. In particular, support for TLS 1.2 encryption without Extended Master Secret (EMS) will be discontinued.
Why This Matters
Some older or non-compliant systems do not support EMS. These systems may no longer be able to send or receive encrypted emails with FedConnect after this change.
✅ TLS 1.3 is fully supported and unaffected.
❌ TLS 1.2 without EMS will no longer be supported for encrypted email.
What You Need to Do
To avoid email delivery failures:
Verify that your organization’s email systems support:
TLS 1.2 with EMS, or
TLS 1.3
Coordinate with any external partners or vendors you communicate with to ensure they are also compliant.
Upgrade outdated systems as necessary to maintain encrypted communication with FedConnect.
Need Assistance?
If you begin experiencing email delivery issues after December 15, 2025, contact your internal IT department or email service provider. Provide them with the details from this notice for review.
If you need further clarification, reach out to Unison FedConnect Support.
We recommend making these updates well before the effective date to ensure uninterrupted communication.