{"id":42837,"date":"2021-04-23T15:32:11","date_gmt":"2021-04-23T07:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/?p=42837"},"modified":"2021-04-23T15:32:14","modified_gmt":"2021-04-23T07:32:14","slug":"sophos-unveils-xgs-series-firewall-appliances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/2021\/04\/23\/sophos-unveils-xgs-series-firewall-appliances\/","title":{"rendered":"Sophos unveils XGS Series firewall appliances"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Sophos, a global player in next-generation cybersecurity, unveiled new <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sophos.com\/en-us\/products\/next-gen-firewall\/tech-specs.aspx\">XGS Series firewall appliances<\/a> with unrivaled performance and advanced protection against cyberattacks. The new appliances feature industry-best Transport Layer Security (TLS) inspection, including native support for TLS 1.3, which is up to five times faster than other models available on the market today.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cSophos Firewall XGS Series appliances represent the most significant hardware upgrade that we have ever released and introduce unmatched detection, protection, and speed,\u201d said Dan Schiappa, chief product officer at Sophos. \u201cSecurity teams can no longer afford to overlook encrypted traffic for fear of breaking something or hurting performance \u2013 there\u2019s too much at risk. We\u2019ve completely redesigned the Sophos Firewall hardware to handle the modern encrypted internet. Security teams now can easily inspect encrypted traffic and shine a light on what was once a black hole, and they can confidently do so without compromising on performance.\u201d<br><br><strong>Cybercriminals Increasingly Using TLS to Avoid Detection<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sophos today also published new research, \u201cNearly Half of Malware Now Use TLS to Conceal Communications,\u201d identifying a surge in cybercriminals using TLS in their attacks. The increasingly popular tactic is used by adversaries to encrypt and encapsulate the content of malicious communications to avoid detection as they carry out attacks.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In fact, 45% of malware detected by Sophos from January through March 2021 used TLS to conceal malicious communications. That\u2019s a staggering rise from the 23% Sophos reported in early 2020. Sophos has also seen an increase in the use of TLS to carry out ransomware attacks in the past year, particularly with manually-deployed ransomware. The majority of malicious TLS traffic that Sophos has detected includes initial-compromise malware, such as loaders, droppers, and document-based installers like BazarLoader, GoDrop, and ZLoader.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cTLS has undoubtedly changed the privacy of internet communications for the better, but for all the good it\u2019s done, it\u2019s also made it much easier for attackers to download and install malicious modules and exfiltrate stolen data \u2013 right under the noses of IT security teams and most security technologies,\u201d said Schiappa. \u201cAttackers are taking advantage of TLS-protected web and cloud services for malware delivery and command and control.&nbsp;Their initial compromise malware is simply the advance guard for major attacks, as they\u2019re setting up camp for the heavy artillery that follows, like ransomware.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Accelerating Threat Protection<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Powered by Sophos Firewall\u2019s Xstream architecture, XGS Series appliances deliver the industry\u2019s best zero-day threat protection, identifying and stopping the most advanced known and potential threats \u2013 including ransomware. Protection is fueled by powerful threat intelligence, available only through SophosLabs Intelix and based on petabytes of SophosLabs threat data. Suspicious files are safely detonated in SophosLabs Intelix virtual environments and subjected to in-depth static analysis for additional detection coverage and intelligence gathering.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">New Xstream flow processors within the appliances automatically accelerate trusted traffic, such as software as a service (SaaS), software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN), and cloud applications, providing maximum headroom for traffic requiring TLS and deep packet inspection. This greatly reduces latency and improves overall performance for important business applications, particularly those using real-time data. The Xstream flow processors are software programmable, allowing Sophos to offload additional traffic in the future. The flexibility to enhance and adapt connectivity on the hardware itself further protects customers\u2019 hardware investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sophos provides unique and intuitive dashboard visibility of TLS traffic and inspection issues, and security administrators can add exceptions for problematic streams with one click. Performance is also optimized out of the box with an extensive set of rules that are updated and maintained by SophosLabs to exclude safe traffic from inspection. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sophos Firewall XGS Series appliances and firmware are easily managed on the cloud-based Sophos Central\u00a0platform alongside Sophos\u2019 entire portfolio of next-generation cybersecurity solutions. Solutions share threat intelligence and automatically respond to security incidents through Sophos\u2019 unique synchronized security approach. Integration with Sophos Managed Threat Response (MTR) further boosts protection with human analysis for 24\/7 fully managed threat detection and response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Availability<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sophos Firewall XGS Series desktop and most 1U rackmount appliances are available for immediate purchase exclusively through Sophos\u2019&nbsp;global channel of partners and managed service providers (MSPs).&nbsp;These models are ideally suited for small, medium, and distributed organizations as an all-in-one network security solution with a&nbsp;strong price to performance ratio and diverse add-on connectivity options. Additional models designed for enterprise edge environments requiring maximum throughput for more complex network configurations will be available in the coming weeks. Simplified&nbsp;licensing&nbsp;includes&nbsp;bundled&nbsp;protection with enhanced support.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The new appliances feature industry-best Transport Layer Security (TLS) inspection, including native support for TLS 1.3, which is up to five times faster than other models available on the market today. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":42838,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[54,2103,53,4100,206],"class_list":["post-42837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biz-solutions","tag-security","tag-security-breach","tag-security-risk-management","tag-security-solutions","tag-sophos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}