{"id":10552,"date":"2026-05-11T11:53:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T09:53:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/partnernews.sophos.com\/en-us\/?p=10552"},"modified":"2026-05-11T11:53:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T09:53:11","slug":"why-executech-made-sophos-firewall-the-last-piece-of-its-security-stack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/partnernews.sophos.com\/en-us\/2026\/05\/partner-program\/why-executech-made-sophos-firewall-the-last-piece-of-its-security-stack\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Executech made Sophos Firewall the last piece of its security stack"},"content":{"rendered":"

Executech’s relationship with Sophos isn’t new. The company \u2014 one of the largest MSPs in the western U.S., serving 1,800 clients and more than 45,000 endpoints \u2014 has relied on Sophos since 2017 and was named our 2024 MSP Partner of the Year<\/a>. The same Sophos solutions Executech deploys to protect customer environments also protect their own internal systems.<\/p>\n

That partnership deepened when Executech standardized on Sophos Managed Detection and Response (MDR)<\/a>, a move that proved its value when the MDR team helped stop a middle-of-the-night ransomware attack<\/a> targeting one of Executech’s customers.<\/p>\n

“I got a call in the middle of the night, and it was Sophos MDR. They mentioned they were seeing indicators of an imminent attack on a domain controller,” Tyler Rasmussen, Executech’s Vice President of Cybersecurity, said. “We were able to get on, and with the help of Sophos, neutralize the threat actor and contain the environment.”<\/p>\n

With MDR and Sophos Endpoint<\/a> already in place, the firewall was the last major piece still fragmented across Executech’s customer base. Hundreds of sites were still running SonicWall or Fortinet appliances \u2014 and the operational burden was becoming harder to justify.<\/p>\n

Ending the \u2018drop everything\u2019 patching cycle<\/h2>\n

“Their licensing, their VPN licensing, the recent security concerns, and how they handled vulnerabilities \u2014 it all pushed us to make Sophos Firewall our standard,” Andrew Sweeney, Executech’s Vice President of Central Services, said regarding the previous firewalls Executech and its customers used.<\/p>\n

For an MSP managing roughly 1,000 firewalls, emergency patching on legacy devices is a major inconvenience and a major business risk.<\/p>\n

“With SonicWall or Fortinet, we’d have to drop everything, figure out what was out there, and rush through manual updates,” Sweeney said. “With Sophos, we haven’t had to do that in a long time. Sophos can push fixes automatically.”<\/p>\n

Rasmussen took it further, noting that Sophos’ MDR and Extended Detection and Response (XDR)<\/a> threat feeds actively monitor the entire firewall install base for early signs of exploitation.<\/p>\n

“There’s a marked difference between the lack of high-severity vulnerabilities we see coming out for Sophos firewalls versus other vendors,” he said.<\/p>\n

MDR + Firewall: A force multiplier<\/h2>\n

With roughly 95% of its customer base on Sophos MDR Complete, adding Sophos Firewall created an immediate force multiplier. Intelligence from MDR and XDR feeds directly back into the firewall, and the MDR team can push blocks without anyone manually creating a rule.<\/p>\n

Sweeney shared an example where legacy SSL VPN configurations without multi-factor authentication (MFA) were still lingering at older client sites. Attackers attempted brute-force access in the middle of the night.<\/p>\n

“The MDR team hopped right in and blocked those bad actors. It really saved our bacon,” he said.<\/p>\n

Rasmussen added that the plug-and-play nature of that monitoring is exactly why Executech steers every customer toward Sophos Firewall.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know things are happening. It’s about whether they get caught or go undetected,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

What Executech would tell a fellow MSP<\/h2>\n

When asked what he’d say to a partner still hesitant about switching, Sweeney pointed to feature parity and training.<\/p>\n

“Anything you can do with a SonicWall, you can do with a Sophos Firewall,” he said. “And the training programs Sophos has put together are quite good. That should be all the resources anyone needs to get comfortable with the product.\u201d<\/p>\n

The migration itself was smoother than expected.<\/p>\n

“Sophos Firewall is pretty darn easy,” Sweeney said. “The interface is intuitive, everything’s right where you need it, and once our technicians see the full ecosystem, the switch just makes sense.”<\/p>\n

Executech now deploys Sophos Firewall, Switches, and Access Points as a full standard hardware stack for every new customer, and has leaned into flex licensing to remove upfront cost barriers when onboarding new clients.<\/p>\n

“For an MSP our size, the more we can standardize on our stack, the more streamlined our operations are and the better we can support our customers,” Sweeney said.<\/p>\n

It’s a philosophy that stretches back to the beginning of the Executech\u2013Sophos relationship. As Rasmussen put it: “Sophos is a true holistic partner. It’s not only the tools it provides, but also its security services that help us lead the way from a security perspective.”<\/p>\n

Looking ahead, the team’s measure of success is refreshingly straightforward.<\/p>\n

“Honestly? Nothing bad happens,” Sweeney said.<\/p>\n

“No news is good news \u2014 but it’s also heartening when we see threats actually get caught at the firewall. That’s validation,” Rasmussen added.<\/p>\n

And with Sophos more than any other vendor, Sweeney said, “it feels like a true partnership.\u201d<\/p>\n

To learn more about Executech\u2019s switch to Sophos Firewall, read the full case study here<\/a>. And if you\u2019re an MSP looking to kickstart your growth with Sophos, sign up for a free MSP Experience demo <\/em>here<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

See why Sophos\u2019 Partner Program was a \u2018really strong differentiator\u2019 for this U.S. company that supports more than 10,000 users<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":10562,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[222,37,298,149],"coauthors":[64],"class_list":["post-10552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-partner-program","tag-managed-detection-and-response-mdr","tag-msp","tag-partner-case-study","tag-sophos-firewall"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/partnernews.sophos.com\/en-us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2026\/05\/featured-image-partner-blog-image-executech-1600x960px-02.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/partnernews.sophos.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/partnernews.sophos.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/partnernews.sophos.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/partnernews.sophos.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/partnernews.sophos.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10552"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/partnernews.sophos.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10563,"href":"https:\/\/partnernews.sophos.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10552\/revisions\/10563"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/partnernews.sophos.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/partnernews.sophos.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/partnernews.sophos.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/partnernews.sophos.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10552"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/partnernews.sophos.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}