We couldn’t wait to talk about the new Sophos XGS family, particularly the Sophos XGS 116 in this case.
First thing is, Sophos’ new flagship line is now called, simply, Sophos Firewall. They have dedicated Xstream Flow processors, and apparently this is a good thing. These multi-core processors just make everything faster. Including the heavy-lift security functions like…
TLS 1.3 Inspection
According to the latest statistics, approximately 90% of web traffic is encrypted. Problem is, encryption makes traffic invisible to most firewalls.
The Sophos XGS 116 removes the blind spots caused by encrypted traffic. The speedy new processors allow you to use SSL Inspection without sacrificing speed and efficiency.
Deep Packet Inspection
Sophos believes you shouldn’t have to choose betrween security and performance. So, the Sophos XGS 116 has a fast Deep Packet Inspection engine. It scans your traffic without using a proxy, which tends to slow things down. The inspection processing is completely offloaded to the DPI engine. This reduces latency. In other words, it speeds things up.
Application Acceleration
Of course, let’s not forget that a lot of your network traffic is important application traffic. Traffic that’s supposed to be there, headed for branch offices, remote users, and so on. This trusted traffic can now be directed to FastPath, which will optimize performance further. This provides extra capacity for intelligently scanning traffic that does need DPI for malware and other threats.
Sophos XGS 116 and XGS 116W specs
The XGS 116 has some pretty advanced features like on-box reporting, dual AV scanning, WAF AV scanning and the email message transfer agent functionality. It’s a desktop appliance, but there will be a rack mount unit available. The XGS116 pushes 7.7 Gbps total firewall Throughput, and 3.5 Gbps Firewall IMIX. IPS Throughput is 2 Gbps, Threat Protection Throughput is 685 Mbps, and Xstream SSL/TLS Inspection is 650 Mbps. The wireless interface is 802.11ac.
You can expect the XGS series to truly be carefree “install and forget” firewalls. As long as you maintain firmware upgrades, the standard installation does an excellent job.
Sophos has always offered an ease-of-use that is nearly unmatched. The XGS 116 is very suitable for small-to medium-sized businesses and remote branch offices. Any firewall designed for this kind of use case has to be easy to fire up, figure out, and forget about. After all, it’s built for organizations that may not have tons of resources to throw at IT staff and security. Sophos believes that nevertheless deserve first-rate protection.
