Important Sophos Firewall product news

The Network Security Product Team has several important Sophos Firewall related news items to share with you.

Sophos Firewall v20

As you know, we launched Sophos Firewall v20 late last year, with several exciting new enhancements. Many of you have already upgraded your firewalls, but for those that haven’t, now is the time!

You will see the update waiting for you in Sophos Central, or in the web admin console as soon as you log in. Make sure you update your firewalls soon, not just to take advantage of the many new features, but also to ensure you have the latest security, performance, and reliability fixes that are in every release.

Check out what’s new in this short video overview:

Sophos ZTNA is now on Sophos Firewall

That’s right! In case you didn’t know, Sophos Firewall v20 integrates a ZTNA gateway directly into the firewall, making ZTNA deployments easier than ever.

It’s a simple decision to switch from remote access VPN to ZTNA. ZTNA provides better security, easier management, and a much smoother and more reliable end-user experience. And with a ZTNA gateway integrated into Sophos Firewall, customers don’t need to deploy anything extra on site to enable secure remote access to systems and applications hosted behind the firewall.

To learn more about ZTNA and how it can help you secure your applications and remote access, check out Sophos.com/ZTNA. It’s easy to try for free.

Sophos Central management updates

The January update for Sophos Central firewall management is now live, which contains several new features and fixes:

SD-WAN enhancements allow “*” wildcard characters in any IP address for the remote end of route-based VPN tunnels. Ideal for use with remote sites that frequently or rapidly change dynamic IP addresses.

Configurable suppression of repetitive alerts changes alert priorities and sets limits on how frequently repetitive alerts should be raised. Use this to suppress normally noisy alerts, keeping them from cluttering your inbox and alert counts in Sophos Central.

Automatic rollback of firmware detection. SFOS v20 and up now supports automatic firmware rollback when it detects that an update was not completely successful. Sophos Central will now detect and alert on firmware rollback events, should they occur.

Plus: other cosmetic changes to match ATP feature naming changes in SFOS v20. Review the full release notes.

Sophos DNS protection early access

The Sophos DNS protection early access program (EAP) kicked off in December and has been one of our most popular early access programs ever, with over 3 billion queries served across several hundred customer sites world-wide.

If you haven’t already joined, now is a great time to get started using it as we’ve recently added new reporting, dashboarding, and safe search features. Review the full details and get started today!

New Sophos Firewall security posture assessment report

The team is pleased to announce that a new security posture assessment (SPA) report is being added to Sophos Central firewall reporting later this week. This customizable report provides a management-level overview of firewall protection activity that makes an excellent tool for showing the value and protection Sophos Firewall delivers. An all-new inventory report is also included that provides a snapshot of your firewall inventory, health status, and license details.

Watch for a separate announcement after we launch this new report in the coming days.