Sophos Firewall Advancements Boost Network Performance and Flexibility

New Sophos Firewall Features Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) Capabilities and Best-in-Class Virtual Private Network (VPN) Performance

Sophos, a global leader in next-generation cybersecurity, today introduced a new version of Sophos Firewall with Xstream software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) capabilities and best-in-class virtual private network (VPN) enhancements that significantly boost network performance and flexibility.

“Today’s globally distributed networks coupled with the explosion of cloud-based applications are forcing many organizations to re-think their traditional WAN architectures,” said Raja Patel, senior vice president of products at Sophos. “A key pillar of our Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) strategy, the new SD-WAN and VPN capabilities integrated in Sophos Firewall enable organizations not only to embrace these necessary changes, but to also adopt flexible wide area network connections and improve resiliency and cloud application performance.”

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Key new SD-WAN capabilities include:

• Xstream FastPath acceleration of Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) VPN traffic: New FastPath controls automatically put important SD-WAN tunnel flows through Xstream Flow Processors in XGS Series appliances to accelerate trusted traffic, dramatically improving performance and protection by freeing up resources for TLS and deep-packet inspection
• SD-WAN orchestration: A new Sophos Central management feature enables easy, automated orchestration of complex SD-WAN overlay networks across multiple sites, simplifying a task that previously might have taken hours down to a few minutes
• SD-WAN profiles with multi-gateway support: A new SD-WAN link management solution enables seamless and efficient traffic routing across multiple WAN link gateways based on performance, without impacting active connections in the event of a disruption
• SD-WAN performance monitoring and logging: New performance monitoring and logging tools provide real time and historical monitoring of SD-WAN link performance and routing metrics, including latency, jitter and packet loss

“SD-WAN improves site availability, cost and performance for enterprise WANs, and is aligned with the broader shift of applications to public cloud workloads. There is high client interest in SD-WAN products, and we estimate that more than 50,000 customers have deployed SD-WAN products in production networks. Further, we expect continued rapid growth of SD-WAN deployments, and forecast vendor revenue to grow at a more than 20% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the next three years,” according to the Gartner® Hype Cycle™ for Enterprise Networking, 2021.

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VPN advancements, which further simplify the orchestration of secure site-to-site and remote-access encrypted tunnels, include:

• VPN performance enhancements: IPsec and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) VPN capacity has increased up to five times, based on hardware model
• VPN user experience enhancements: A streamlined administration experience, new step-by-step wizards and VPN logging enhancements make it easier and more intuitive to perform day-to-day VPN administration and setup
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) Hybrid Network Integration: A new import tool makes connecting hybrid on-premise and AWS virtual private cloud (VPC) networks easy

Sophos Firewall integrates with Sophos ZTNA (zero trust network access), under one unified management umbrella, a key pillar of Sophos’ SASE strategy that launched earlier this year, providing a more simplified and scalable solution over traditional remote-access VPN. The network solution is also part of the Sophos Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem, which integrates Sophos’ entire portfolio of products, services and threat intelligence for faster and more contextual and synchronized detection, protection and response.

Availability
Sophos Firewall is available for immediate purchase exclusively through Sophos’ global channel of partners and Managed Service Providers (MSPs). It is easily managed in the cloud-native Sophos Central platform alongside other solutions, where users can oversee installations, respond to alerts, and track licenses and upcoming renewal dates via a single, intuitive interface.

What Customers and Channel Partners Say
“The newly enhanced Sophos Firewall delivers unrivaled functionality with industry-best performance,” said Alan Steady, director of professional services at Firewalls.com. “New SD-WAN capabilities dynamically process and route traffic at breakneck speed, and better enable us to support customers as they increasingly migrate to cloud-based applications. We highly recommend Sophos Firewall to all of our customers as a first class, easy to manage and robust solution that eliminates the need for multiple security products.”

“This is Sophos’ best ever firewall software release. Together, this new Sophos Firewall release and the XGS Series hardware deliver extreme, unmatched performance,” said Vishvas Chitale, director at the Chitale Group. “Sophos Firewall provides great stability and killer new SD-WAN and IPsec offload capabilities. As a Sophos customer, this feature-rich new version doesn’t simply support connectivity – it enables our business.”

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