Sophos Security Heartbeat Links Threat Management to Modern Firewalls

Sophos introduces a new class of advanced firewalls to protect both networks and endpoints from zero-day attacks and other security threats.

Sophos offers multiple NGFW appliances in the XG Series product line. All are equipped with Intel fourth-generation processors, Flexi Port modules, solid-state drives and a complete NGFW feature set with upgradable options.

The main dashboard is called the Network Security Control Center, and it’s the primary monitoring and starting point for all security operations. The control center displays all important information, including system status, traffic, heartbeat, advanced threats, virtual private networks, risky activity and policy statuses.

The Sophos NGFWs offer unified policy management, where all policy definitions can take place using a single dashboard. All policies are grouped together, including user, networking, applications and business logic. Advanced sorting and filtering make it simple to manage and identify policies.

Policies offer granular control over accepted activities. Here, user and network rules can be defined using simple pull-down menu choices, which enable administrators to combine numerous control elements, ranging from Web filtering to traffic shaping to zone controls.

Sophos bundles extensive templates to make it much easier to create business application policy rules. These rules become part of the policy definitions and can be quickly created for most popular applications on the fly. Multiple rules can be defined and assigned to policies.

The Sophos Network Security Control Center provides a simplified interface that allows administrators to quickly control major aspects of the platform. In practice, it never takes more than three mouse clicks to navigate through the dashboards, and full descriptions of each option are offered when selected.

Administrators can drill down into details on most any item offered via the primary dashboard. The resulting drill-down screens are very informative and offer instant insights into multiple traffic statistics, security postures and activities.

The Control Center offers an expedited method for administrators to quickly determine the overall status of network security. Concerns are highlighted in red, and active threats are clearly displayed.

For businesses deploying multiple Sophos security products, the Firewall Manager offers centralized control and provides at a glance the complete operational status of all security appliances on the network.

Sophos bundles in multiple reports, which can be displayed in real time directly on the dashboard. Reports include risk quotients, as well as risks to applications. Administrators also can obtain historical data reports to illustrate network activity surrounding a breach.