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Activate Your License

When you buy a new license, you need to activate it.

You do this in Sophos Central (unless a Sophos Partner handles license activation for you).

When you buy an upgrade, it may be activated automatically or you may need to activate it.

We may update your devices automatically under certain circumstances even if you've set up scheduled updates for your devices. We may update your devices automatically as follows:

  • If you change your license or your license changes.

    For example, if you apply an Intercept X with XDR license to an account that had an Intercept X Advanced license, we install Sophos LiveQuery on any computers that had Intercept X Advanced installed.

  • If you change the software assigned to a device, it updates immediately to apply those changes.

    For example, if you assign a Device Encryption license to a computer running Intercept X Advanced, this installs the new software immediately.

Note

If you are starting a trial of Sophos Central, you don't need to activate a license yet. You do this only when you upgrade to a paid license.

To activate a license, do as follows.

  1. Ensure you have the license key shown in the license schedule that Sophos sent you.
  2. Click your Profile icon, and then click Licensing.
  3. Now use your license key.

    • If you see Apply Activation Code, enter your key and click Apply.
    • If you see an Apply License Key link, click it. Enter your key and click Apply.

When you encounter an error message while activating your license, see Activation code error messages.