Response from One Connect Limited ICT Services
Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention, we have confirmed with Sophos that the problem child sites are having is indeed that referenced in the Sophos KB - A child update manager shows the error 'Threat detection data update failed'
Currently the Central Sophos server is running enterprise console version 5.1 , this has been the case since July 2013, and has been successfully serving updates to child enterprise consoles whether they are version 5.1 or 5.2.
Sophos have unexpectedly changed this compatibility between mis-matched console versions, now requiring downstream child servers to be on the same version as the central one.
Currently all school sites that are running Enterprise Console 5.2 will be seeing this error, and not updating correctly, sites using Enterprise Console 5.1 (which we believe are the majority of sites) will be working correctly.
All sites running Enterprise Console 5.2 will need to follow the instructions in the Sophos KB article linked above, updates will then function correctly.
The long term solution is for One Connect Limited to upgrade the central server to the latest release from Sophos.
We need to manage this upgrade carefully to ensure all sites continue to receive updates after the upgrade, if we were to simply update to 5.2 now then all the child sites running 5.1 would stop updating as they would then be mismatched.
Schools will be informed via the portal when this upgrade is taking place to ensure you can plan to upgrade your installation of Sophos enterprise console in line with the central one getting upgraded.
Thank you