We’re happy to announce that the early entry program (EAP) is now underway for the most recent Sophos Firewall launch. This replace brings a number of Safe by Design enhancements and lots of of your prime requested options.
Safe By Design
Web dealing with infrastructure has not too long ago come below growing assaults to take advantage of vulnerabilities and different weaknesses to realize a foothold on networks.
As you recognize, at Sophos, we take safety very severely and during the last a number of releases we’ve got invested in implementing many Safe By Design ideas to harden the product and make it a way more tough goal. This launch takes Safe by Design to an entire new stage.
Sophos Firewall Well being Test
A robust safety posture is dependent upon preserving your firmware updated and making certain your firewall is optimally configured. Sophos Firewall v22 makes it a lot simpler to judge and deal with the configuration of your firewall with the brand new Well being Test characteristic.
This new characteristic evaluates dozens of various configuration settings in your firewall and compares them with CIS benchmarks and different greatest practices, offering speedy insights to areas that could be in danger. It should determine all high-risk settings and supply suggestions with fast drill-down to the areas of concern so you may simply deal with them.
The well being test standing is displayed on a brand new Management Heart widget and a full report is on the market below the “Firewall well being test” most important menu merchandise.
Different Safe By Design enhancements:
- Subsequent-gen Xstream Structure – introduces an all-new management aircraft re-architected for max safety and scalability to take us into the long run. The brand new management aircraft allows modularization, isolation, and containerization of companies like IPS for instance, to run like “apps” on the firewall platform. It additionally allows full separation of privileges for added safety. As well as, high-availability deployments now profit from a self-healing functionality that’s repeatedly monitoring system state and fixes deviations between units mechanically.
- Hardened kernel – The following-gen Xstream Structure in Sophos Firewall OS is constructed upon a brand new hardened kernel (v6.6+) that gives enhanced safety, efficiency, and scalability to maximise present and future {hardware}. This new kernel presents tighter course of isolation and higher mitigation for side-channel assaults in addition to mitigations for CPU vulnerabilities (Spectre, Meltdown, L1TF, MDS, Retbleed, ZenBleed, Downfall). It additionally presents hardened usercopy, stack canaries, and Kernel Handle House Structure Randomization (KASLR).
- Distant integrity monitoring – Sophos Firewall OS v22 now integrates our Sophos XDR Linux Sensor that allows real-time monitoring of system integrity, together with unauthorized configuration, rule exports, trojan horse execution makes an attempt, file tampering, and extra. This helps our safety groups, who’re proactively monitoring our total Sophos Firewall set up base to raised determine, examine, and reply extra rapidly to any assault. That is an added safety functionality that no different firewall vendor supplies.
- New anti-malware engine – Sophos Firewall OS v22 integrates the most recent Sophos anti-malware engine with enhanced zero-day real-time detection of rising threats utilizing world fame lookups. It takes full benefit of SophosLabs’ huge cloud database of recognized malicious recordsdata, up to date each 5 minutes or much less. It additionally introduces AI and ML mannequin detections and delivers enhanced telemetry to SophosLabs for accelerating their rising risk detection evaluation.
Different safety and scalability enhancements:
- Firmware updates by way of SSL and certificates pinning ensures authenticity
- Lively Risk Response logging enhancements enhanced visibility
- NDR Necessities risk rating is included in Logs for added insights
- NDR Necessities information middle choice for information residency necessities
- Immediate internet class alerts for schooling establishments
- XML API entry management enhancements with added granularity
- TLS 1.3 help for system entry for the WebAdmin console and portals
Streamlined administration and high quality of life enhancements:
- Enhanced navigation efficiency
- {Hardware} monitoring for SNMP with a downloadable MIB
- sFlow Monitoring for real-time visibility
- NTP server settings defaults to “Use pre-defined NTP server”
- UI enhancements for XFRM interfaces with pagination and search/filter choices
SG UTM options:
With Sophos UTM heading towards end-of-life quickly (July 30, 2026), some migrating prospects will respect these added options:
- SHA 256 and 512 help for OTP tokens
- MFA help for WAF form-based authentication
- Audit path logs with earlier than and after monitoring to satisfy the most recent NIST requirements
Get the complete particulars
Obtain the complete What’s New Information for a whole overview of all the nice new options and enhancements in v22.
Get began right this moment
You may obtain the improve bundle or installer for v22 from the Sophos Firewall v22 EAP Registration Web page. Merely submit your particulars and the obtain hyperlinks will probably be emailed to you right away.
All help through the EAP will probably be via our boards on the Sophos Firewall Group.
Please present suggestions utilizing the choice on the prime of each display in your Sophos Firewall as highlighted under in pink or by way of the Group Boards.
