Sophos XG Firewall: Overview and Analysis

Sophos was founded in 1985. and providing its services for endpoint, network, encryption, web, email and mobile security. There are 100 million users in 150 countries, who are using company’s products.  Sophos is based in Oxford, UK and traded publically in London Stock Exchange.  The company sells its products through its 26000 partners around the world. 

Sophos XG Firewall provides next-generation firewall protection. It is very easy to setup and manage.  It blocks all unknown threats, automatically responds to security incidents by isolating compromised systems, and exposes hidden user, application and threat risks on the network. Sophos also includes synchronized security (links endpoints and firewalls to enable them to communicate and share information, identify compromised systems and isolate them until cleaned up), a web application firewall, email protection, ransomware protection, phishing prevention, all firewall rules unified on a single screen, and a secure web gateway.

“We’ve seen a recent shift in the threat landscape, and a dramatic increase in the number and complexity of security systems,” said Chris McCormack, senior product marketing manager, Sophos. “These changes, combined with the overwhelming amount of data produced, have created a perilous situation that requires a radical approach to network security, one that can enable security systems to work together; that simplifies and streamlines workflows; and can parse through enormous volumes of data to focus attention on exactly what’s important.” 

XG Firewall is primarily targeted at SMB and mid-market organizations, although its value proposition also appeals to many larger organizations. It’s also popular in the protection of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) services running in Microsoft Azure.

Firewall throughput of up to 100 Gbps, NGFW throughput of up to 11,800 Mbps, up to 30 million concurrent connections and 300,000 new connections per second.

XG Firewall integrates with its Sophos Central Endpoint and Root Cause Analytics solutions to provide deep analytics in malware attacks. Machine learning is also integrated into its cloud-sandbox solution, enabling better detection rates and lower numbers of false positives.

XG Firewall is available in a variety of hardware models with different levels of performance, as well as for virtualization platforms, as a software appliance for x86 hardware, and in Microsoft Azure.

XG Firewall integrates with Sophos Central Endpoint and Intercept X, which use agents.

Pricing starts at $249/year for the entry-level XG 85 appliance. Pricing depends on the performance and features required.