Sophos Connect v2 Early Access Program is Now Available

Products•Early Access Program•Sophos Connect•XG Firewall

Sophos Connect is our free remote access VPN client allowing remote workers to securely access their organization’s XG Firewall-protected network. It had over 800,000 active installs in the last month. Here’s what’s new.

May 05 2020 By

What’s New in v2:

Sophos Connect 2.0 for Windows is now available in early access (EAP) and is a great new update for this important product. The main focus of this release is to add support for SSL VPN while making it easy to bulk deploy.

  • SSL VPN support for Windows
  • Bulk deployment of SSL and/or IPSec VPN configurations via an enhanced provisioning file
    • The same convenient deployment as in Sophos Connect v1 for IPSec
    • Support for one-time passwords (OTP)
    • Improved DUO multi-factor authentication (MFA) support (when connecting to XG Firewall v18)
    • Auto-connect option
    • Option to execute a logon script when connecting
    • Remote gateway availability probing
  • Automatic synchronization of the latest user policy if the SSL policy is updated on the firewall (when using the provisioning file to deploy) as well as a manual re-synchronization of the latest policy
  • Automatic failover to next firewall WAN link if one link fails
  • File extension association for policy files – import a policy file into Sophos Connect by just double-clicking it in Windows Explorer, or opening the file attached in an email

Where to get it:

Please take a look at the XG Firewall community announcement to get started with the Early Access Program. There you’ll find full details on all the changes, instructions on how to deploy, and the download itself.

Feedback:

Partners and customers are encouraged to provide feedback in the forums.

Future plans:

Of course, a Mac version is planned. There are exciting enhancements coming to remote-access and VPN configuration and orchestration in XG Firewall v18.5, and particularly with Sophos Central Management. In the coming months the team will be making it easier than ever to centrally deploy remote access and site-to-site VPN from Sophos Central. This is all being worked on now and we will announcing it as we get closer to launch.

About the Author

Chris McCormack is a network security specialist at Sophos where he has been focused on firewall and network protection since joining Sophos in 2008. When not evangelizing Sophos network security products, Chris specializes in providing advice and insight into the latest threats and network protection technologies and strategies.