What’s coming next for network security

What’s coming next for network security

Posted by HSSL Technologies on Oct 26th 2021

We’ve already had a busy year of network security product releases. New hardware, software, and cloud management capabilities:

  • XGS Series appliances with dedicated Xstream Flow Processors, powerful protection and performance, and enhanced connectivity
  • Sophos Firewall OS v18.5 MR1 with a ton of new enhancements for security, performance improvements, and helpful features
  • SD-WAN VPN Orchestration in Sophos Central, which provides enormous time savings by automating the of setting up of complex SD-WAN overlay networks between firewalls

In addition, the team just launched a new Partner Dashboard in Sophos Central for all partners who manage customer firewalls – providing at-a-glance status of all firewalls under management with easy drill-down access to individual customer firewalls.

What’s coming soon

There are a number of exciting network security product releases planned over the next few months and they’re all part of our Secure Access Portfolio, which enables you to securely connect your network – whether at the service edge, or the core – with more flexibility than ever.

Sophos Firewall OS v19 with Xstream SD-WAN

The next release of SFOS brings a number of exciting features to Sophos Firewall, including Xstream SD-WAN with sophisticated new multi-link performance probing, monitoring, and routing capabilities.

It also includes many VPN enhancements, including Xstream FastPath acceleration of IPsec and dramatic increases in SSL performance and capacity.

There’s also new search capabilities within the management console and a ton of other enhancements. Early access is expected to begin in October.

Sophos Central management features

You can look forward to several firewall Central management features over the coming months, including credential-free token registration of new firewalls for partners, Central rule pinning to protect firewall rules from local changes, API access to many management features, and additional enhancements to SD-WAN VPN Orchestration to support multi-tunnel redundancy and failover scenarios.

These features will be rolling out over the next few months.

Sophos Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA)

Sophos Zero Trust Network Access had a successful first early access program and is now gearing up for release in December.

Sophos ZTNA makes secure remote access to corporate applications and data easy. It’s a much better solution than remote access VPN, provides better security and micro-segmentation, and eliminates a potential attack vector for ransomware.

Sophos Switch

In early December, we’ll be launching our new Sophos Switch product line.

These access layer switches will enable your entire network stack to be managed from a single pane of glass in the cloud from Sophos Central.

There will be 8-, 24-, and 48-port models and different options for PoE to fit every network. They will ultimately support Synchronized Security and Security Heartbeat enforcement, providing unique and powerful security for your core network.

Sophos Wireless

Starting in October, all Sophos Central accounts will have access to Sophos Wireless management for free: we’re removing the management license cost.

This means that everyone can start utilizing Sophos Central to manage their wireless access points, which offers added scalability and features over firewall-managed wireless. Take advantage of this starting in October by simply moving your wireless access point management to Sophos Central at no charge.

That’s a LOT of great new products and capabilities that are coming over the next few months – all managed from Sophos Central, making network security easier and more powerful at the same time.

We hope you’re as excited about these new products and features as we are. It promises to be an exciting close to the year. A special thank you to all our loyal customers and partners who help make these products so successful!