Sophos Firewall v21 has been our fastest adopted release to date, but many customers still haven’t upgraded. Upgrading Sophos firewall is free and should be a top priority as it not only improves performance, management, and features, but it also includes important security enhancements to keep organizations protected from cyberattacks.

Sophos Firewall v21 is a free upgrade for all licensed Sophos Firewall customers – including XGS Series, cloud, virtual, and software firewalls. Note: XG Series devices which are soon to be end-of-life and need to be upgraded to XGS Series devices immediately are not supported by v21.

You will find the update by either logging into Sophos Central or via the on-box management console. It’s a quick few-click process to upgrade and you can use Sophos Central to schedule the update for a convenient time. Sophos Firewall v21 is a fully supported upgrade from any previous supported firmware version.

Watch the video below for an overview of what’s new, download the What’s New Guide, or read on for the full details.

 

Active Threat Response with 3rd Party Threat Feeds:

• Active Threat Response has been extended with support for third-party threat feeds to enable easier integration with 3rd party SoC providers, MSPs, and various vertical or regional focused threat intelligence sources
• Synchronized Security’s automated response to active threats is also extended to third-party threat feeds to isolate compromised devices and prevent lateral movement.

 

Enhanced scalability:

• High-availability (HA) deployments gain added resilience and more seamless transitions for reduced down time
• IPsec VPN gains improved manageability, configuration, and performance with up to a 3x improvement with the new 2^nd Gen XGS Desktop models
• Authentication and web enhancements also improve performance and scalability

 

Seamless upgrades:

• Any-to-any backup and restore for added flexibility when upgrading to the latest XGS Series appliances – including our new Gen 2 desktop models
• Port mapping support to make it easy to upgrade to an appliance with a different port configuration
• True zero-touch deployment and configuration from Sophos Central

 

Streamlined management:

• Multiple user-experience enhancements, including the overall look and feel, Control Center cards, as well as VPN and static route configuration optimization
• Let’s Encrypt certificate support across many areas of the firewall
• Expanded network object visibility to see where objects are being used
• Dramatically improved SSO (single sign-on) time for Sophos Central on-box management

 

Learn more – with deep dive articles and demo videos:

• Download the full What’s New Guide
• Review the release notes
• Consult the online documentation
• Check out our deep-dive articles with demo videos:
  • Streamlined management
  • Third-party threat feeds
  • Let’s encrypt certificates
  • VPN, routing, and other enhancements
  • Zero-touch deployment

 

One more thing – Ansible Collection:

I’d like to mention one more thing: earlier this week, Sophos announced our new Ansible Collection for Sophos Firewall. If you’re not familiar with Ansible, it’s an open-source IT automation engine that enables provisioning, configuration management, application deployment, orchestration, and many other IT processes. It is free to use, and the project benefits from the experience and intelligence of its thousands of contributors – now including Sophos Firewall.