Introducing Central Firewall Reporting with XG Firewall v18

Products•Sophos Central•XG Firewall

New cloud-based reporting tool provides the flexibility to create custom historical reports on network activity for free.

Feb 28 2020 By

XG Firewall v18 is here, and with it comes a slew of terrific new features that address the visibility, protection, and performance problems organizations face every day. One of the more exciting enhancements v18 adds is Central Firewall Reporting (CFR), Sophos’ new cloud-based reporting tool. Sophos CFR enables customers to create historical reports on network activity with a great deal of customization. It’s extremely flexible, and it’s included for free on any XG Firewall capable of running the v18 firmware.

Greater insight through analytics

If you are talking with someone who has responsibility for his or her organization’s network, here’s a simple question to ask. Do I have a good understanding of the user activities, applications, network events, risks, and performance in our security environment? If they don’t, or the solution they’re using only scratches the surface, a reporting tool that provides deeper insight in these areas could be just what they need. Armed with deeper analytics, they can implement policy changes to drive efficiencies that enhance productivity while also protecting against cyber threats.

Flexible, customizable reporting

Creating reports on the topics that are important to your customers should be easy. And with CFR it is. An integral component of Sophos Central, Central Firewall Reporting provides organizations with a flexible set of options to capture network activity through their Sophos Central account and XG Firewall. Using the interactive dashboard, they can drill down into the syslog data for a granular view that is presented in a visual format for easy understanding. The data can then be analyzed for trends that could lead to gaps in security, requiring policy changes.

Key features in Central Firewall Reporting

With Central Firewall Reporting, your customers can create reports to fit their needs using one of pre-defined report templates and customizing it the way they want. Here are some of the key features:

  • Up to seven days of historical reporting
  • Rich, granular data organized into easy-to-understand reports
  • Pre-defined out-of-the-box report templates
  • Flexible report table and charts allow you to customize each report
  • Report Dashboard provides an at-a-glance view from the XG Firewall for network operational health, policy control events, and all security-driven events
  • Visual representation of data displayed in graphical form
  • Search and retrieval of all log data from the XG Firewall

 

 

Coming soon

What’s next for CFR? Because Central Firewall Reporting is cloud-based, we’ll roll out additional features and report templates without requiring any firmware update to your customers’ XG Firewalls. Even bigger, however, is a new reporting service with more features and built-in reports. Complementing the free version of Central Firewall Reporting, CFR Premium is a “for pay” service that unlocks more capabilities and built-in report templates along with historical reporting up to one year. CFR Premium is designed for organizations with more connected devices that generate larger amounts of syslog data and want the flexibility to add storage capacity as needed. Look for CFR Premium to launch in the coming months. In the meantime, have your customers try out the free version to see the types of custom reports they can create and the insights they’ll get into network activity. For more information, see the CFR web page on the Sophos website and read the FAQ.

XG Firewall Resource Center

If you’d like to find out more about  XG Firewall v18, visit our resource center on the Sophos Partner Portal or check out the related blog post New Sophos Central Management and Reporting for XG Firewall.

 

Please note: Many of the links above require access to the Sophos Partner Portal, which is available only to Sophos Partners. If you are a registered partner and have trouble logging in, please contact customercare@sophos.com.

In some cases, if you are not logged in, the direct links given may not work. If so, verify you are logged in to the Partner Portal and then click the link again to view the desired page.

 

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