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Compliance asks for TLS 1.3, old clients and partner APIs stick to TLS 1.2

TLS 1.3 is the recommended standard since 2018 (RFC 8446). Old versions (1.0, 1.1) are deprecated, but 1.2 is still needed for backwards compat. As of 2026: both 1.2 and 1.3 active, 1.0/1.1 off, no orphan.

Try this first

  1. 1On your web server (nginx, IIS, Apache): set ssl_protocols to TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3, not 1.0 or 1.1.
  2. 2Cipher suites: pick modern per Mozilla SSL Configuration Generator. For max compatibility 'intermediate', for strict security 'modern' (TLS 1.3 only).
  3. 3Test at ssllabs.com/ssltest, target A or A+. Only enable 0-RTT (early data) if you know what replay-attack impact means.
  4. 4For mail servers (SMTP STARTTLS, IMAPS): same rule, TLS 1.2 + 1.3, old versions off. Postfix smtpd_tls_protocols = !SSLv2, !SSLv3, !TLSv1, !TLSv1.1.
  5. 5Communicate with partners before phasing out 1.2, some old API clients (Java 7, older .NET) silently fail to connect.

When to bring us in

If you have a mix of modern and legacy clients and no view where old TLS is still active, we can inventory the TLS stack and plan a phase-out.

See also

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