XG Firewall v18 got off to a tremendous start with thousands of customers upgrading on launch day to take advantage of the new Xstream Architecture and other great enhancements.
Today, the product team is pleased to announce a new release of XG Firewall v18, maintenance release 1 (MR1), that is now available for all XG Firewall devices. This latest release includes all security hotfixes, as well as over fifty performance, reliability and stability enhancements, and support for our new SD-RED devices.
Upgrading to v18 MR1 is seamless from v17.5 MR6 and above, and from any other v18 release version. XG Firewall customers will soon start seeing the new release appear in their console with a firmware upgrade notification. However, for customers that don’t want to wait, they can initiate the upgrade manually anytime. Just send your customers to the MySophos Licensing Portal via the URL below.
Find Out What’s New
Watch this brief five-minute overview of what’s new in XG Firewall v18:
Here are the top new enhancements at a glance:
- Xstream Architecture: A new streaming DPI engine, high-performance TLS 1.3 inspection, AI-powered threat intelligence with in-depth reporting, and FastPath application acceleration
- Sophos Central: Group firewall management and cloud reporting make management easier and provide deeper insights into network activity with flexible report-customization tools and a new license for extending your firewall data storage in the cloud
- Synchronized SD-WAN: Brings the power of Synchronized Security to reliably and accurately route application and user-based traffic over preferred WAN links
- Plug-and-Play High Availability (HA): Makes it easy to enable business continuity and adds peace-of-mind. Simply connect two XG Series appliances together and you’ll be up and running in no time. And Sophos Central now supports HA pairs
- Real-time Flow Monitoring: Get at-a-glance insights into active bandwidth-consuming hosts, applications, and users – a fan favorite feature from our UTM 9 platform
- Expanded Notifications and Alerts: You will never miss an important network security event, whether it’s related to a threat, service, or important performance metric
- New SD-RED Model Support: With MR1, take advantage of our all-new SD-RED 20 and SD-RED 60 models that provide added performance, modular connectivity, and redundant power for the ultimate solution for remote-branch or device connectivity
Upgrading XG Firewall firmware is easy. Help remind your customers how to upgrade with this video refresher.
Migrating from SG UTM
Sophos SG UTM customers interested in taking advantage of all the great new enhancements in XG Firewall can do so for free at anytime. A valid license can be transferred over at no extra charge and Sophos Professional Services is happy to help with migration if desired. Existing SG Series hardware is fully supported (except for the SG 105, which lacks the minimum required 4 GB of RAM). However, you may want to take this opportunity to consider refreshing your customer’s hardware to take full advantage of all the new capabilities such as TLS inspection. Check out this recent article for full details.
Migrating from Cyberoam
Migrating from Cyberoam to XG Firewall v18 is strongly encouraged to get all the added usability, security, and performance benefits of XG Firewall. If any of your customers are using Cyberoam, we are currently offering an XG Firewall upgrade promotion.
New to XG Firewall
And of course, for any new customers who are not familiar with Sophos XG Firewall, let them know why it offers the world’s best visibility, protection, and response.
