2024 got off to a flying start: Gartner named us a Leader for Endpoint Protection for the 14th consecutive time. No other vendor has been a Leader for longer!
Since the start of the year, we’ve already released another round of solution enhancements. Check out the latest updates below and watch our video recap of last quarter’s product updates.
WHAT’S NEW
Looking Back on Last Quarter: Review Video
Last quarter was packed with innovation. This 5-minute video is a handy round-up of last quarter’s releases – feel free to share with your customers!
Sophos Endpoint: Account Health Check Enhancements
Our built-in Account Health Check is a highly popular tool that helps users optimize their security posture. We continue to expand the functionality and in January we delivered:
- Updated calculation method for threat protection policy scores to better convey the right level of urgency for issues.
- A new approach to calculating the overall (summary) score. We now display the lowest score rather than the average score to ensure areas of weakness are not obscured by good posture in other areas.
- An Account Health Check widget in the Sophos Central Admin dashboard increases visibility and makes it easier for customers to see when they need to act.
Sophos MDR/XDR: New Third-party Integrations
Sophos MDR and Sophos XDR enable customers to leverage telemetry from their existing security technologies to accelerate threat detection and response. We continue to extend our expansive ecosystem of third-party integrations, which now includes:
- Google Workspace (included with Sophos MDR and XDR at no additional cost)
- Cisco Meraki (Firewall Integration Pack) – a new API-based integration that complements our existing log-collector option.
- Auth0 (Identity Integration Pack)
- Secutec SecureDNS (Network Integration Pack)
We’ve also made Blackberry CylanceOptics and Broadcom Symantec endpoint security integrations available in an open beta.
Sophos Central: MegaNav Fully Live
We have fully released our new Sophos Central MegaNav, the top navigation menu that frees up screen real estate and optimizes workflows for users.
Sophos Firewall: New Security Posture Assessment Report
The new security posture assessment (SPA) report in Sophos Central firewall reporting provides a management-level overview of firewall protection activity. It includes an all-new inventory report that provides a snapshot of customers’ firewall inventory, health status, and license details. Take advantage of this report to demonstrate the value and protection Sophos Firewall delivers.
Sophos Firewall: Management Updates
The January update for Sophos Central firewall management is now live, and delivers several new features and fixes, including:
- SD-WAN enhancements allow “*” wildcard characters in any IP address for the remote end of route-based VPN tunnels. It’s ideal for use with remote sites that frequently or rapidly change dynamic IP addresses.
- Configurable suppression of repetitive alerts changes alert priorities and sets limits on how frequently repetitive alerts should be raised.
- Automatic rollback of firmware detection when it detects that an update was not completely successful.
Sophos Firewall: SonicWall Migration Assistant
Our new SonicWall Migration Assistance makes it quicker and easier for SonicWall users to switch to Sophos Firewall and start enjoying superior performance and protection. The tool works with backups from SonicOS versions 6.5.x and 7.x. It supports XGS Series devices and provides a configuration export for the latest SFOS v20.0 release. Following rigorous testing, we’re now ready to accelerate SonicWall migrations! Visit the Sophos Partner portal to get access to the SonicWall Migration Assistant.
Sophos Firewall: SFOS 19.5 MR4 Release
While we encourage customers to upgrade to our latest firmware (v20) released back in November, we continue to support organizations running the previous version of SFOS. Our latest maintenance update takes the quality and stability of version 19.5 release a step further, resolving over 65 field-reported issues and adding some enhancements along the way. Highlights include:
- [VPN] Delivering stronger encryption for Phase-1 IKEv2 Tunnels for IPsec with GCM and suite-B ciphers support. Also, compatible with OpenVPN 3.0 clients.
- [Logging] Customers can customize the delimiter in syslog event messages, offering flexibility in managing log data.
- [ZTNA] The ZTNA gateway in the firewall supports scaled deployments with up to 5000 concurrent connections – a 2.5X increase.
Sophos Wireless: AP6 Mesh Network
The latest updates to Sophos AP6 include the ability to establish a mesh network with AP6 managed locally or with Sophos Central. Mesh networks can be established with the 2.4G, 5G, and 6G bands (with the 6E models), improving network performance. This is another excellent opportunity to discuss the benefits of Wi-Fi6/6E and refreshing older Access Points with our latest models. Learn more.
Sophos Switch: MR4 Release
Our latest maintenance release for Sophos Switch delivers additional security for administrator authentication by supporting RADIUS and TACACS+ for authentication.
Sophos Email: Certificate-Based Connector
To align with Microsoft’s latest connector policy and future-proof our M365 integration, we’ve updated our connector approach to create and use certificate-based connectors instead of IP-based ones. This transition has been successfully delivered with no impact to Sophos Email’s capabilities or the customer experience.
Sophos Workload Protection: Linux Enhancements
Customers can now run the Sophos Protection for Linux agent on ARM64-based Linux servers in addition to x64 platforms. ARM64 continues to gain traction in cloud-based environments, with cloud providers adopting the architecture for their own offerings such as AWS Graviton.
Sophos Protection for Linux has also been enhanced with new installation options. Customers can now choose to install the agent in a custom location and run pre-installation checks to help troubleshoot potential compatibility issues.
Partnerships: Fireside chat with Measured Insurance
I recently hosted a fireside chat with Jack Vines, Co-founder and CEO of Measured Insurance and Analytics, one of our U.S. insurance partners. Jack and I compared notes on the trends we’d observed in 2023 and made predictions for the year ahead. Jack also highlighted the discounts they offer to Sophos customers, recognizing and rewarding their reduced cyber risk. Watch the recording.
ANALYST RECOGNITION
Gartner Magic Quadrant™ for Endpoint Protection Platforms
Sophos has once again been named a Leader in the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Endpoint Protection Platforms (EPP), marking our 14th consecutive recognition as a Leader in this category. Sophos’ continued position as a Leader in this Gartner Magic Quadrant is a strong endorsement of our strategy and vision in the hyper-competitive endpoint security market. Read the partner blog post here.
Q4 2023 SE Labs Endpoint Protection Report – 100% Total Protection Score!
It’s hard to beat perfect! SE Labs has published its Q4 (October to December) 2023 Endpoint Protection report. Sophos achieved two AAA SE Labs test awards for the sixth consecutive report by detecting and stopping commodity, real-world cyberattacks, and simulated targeted attacks with 100% accuracy. Read more.
KuppingerCole’s Leadership Compass on Email Security
Sophos Email excelled in KuppingerCole’s recent Email Security Leadership Compass, placing as a Product Leader, Market Leader, and Market Champion in the evaluation. This marks the first time that Sophos Email has achieved a leadership position in an Email Security evaluation. See the report here.
