Sophos XG310 Review

Every business has precious data which they don't want to lose at any cost. But when we see the current attack reports, it's huge. From small to large enterprises, every business is at risk, hackers are trying to breach their network. Firewalls are one of the best solutions to protect your network from various hazards. Sophos continue adding new devices with updated functionalities and this time we got XG310 with advanced protection.

A slew of security and threat protection features

No need to setup and manage policies across multiple modules or screens. XG310 comes with unified policy model enabling to manage, view, filter, and sort all your user, application and network policies on a single screen. It comes with several features including Security Heartbeat, full web application firewall, and complete email anti-spam, encryption, and DLP.

There are plenty of built-in reports to keep an eye on the networks happenings. It offers detailed reports as standard, stored locally with no separate tools required. Also, it has a unique User Threat Quotient reports that show you which of your users are putting your security at risk.

The appliance is built using Intel multi-core technology, solid-state drives, and accelerated in-memory content scanning. In addition, Sophos FastPath packet optimization technology provides maximum throughput.

If you have more than one XG firewalls, the Sophos Firewall Manager provides a single console for the complete central management. And if you also want to consolidate reporting across multiple XG, SG, and Cyberoam appliances then with Sophos iView, you can.

A really interesting and useful feature that you will get with XG310 is Sophos Synchronized Security. It links endpoints and firewall to enable unique insights and coordination. Security HeartbeatTM relays Endpoint health status and enables the firewall to immediately identify and respond to a compromised system on the network.

The 8^th layer of Sophos XG310

It comes with Sophos patented 8^th layer which works on identity-based policy technology. This layer enables user level controls over applications, bandwidth, and other network resources regardless of IP-address, location, network or device.

Deployment and configuration

XG310 can be easily deployed and configure by simply connecting it to the network and browse to the default IP address with a web browser from a machine that’s connected to the same network. When you access the web-based interface, first time, it will take you to the through a brief setup wizard that will guide you to set up the basic appliance configuration as well as put a base security policy in place. It has a redesigned interface that makes navigation a breeze.

This can be deployed in two modes: Gateway and Bridge. If you want to replace your existing firewall, router, and perimeter security device, then you have to set it up in gateway mode, but if you want to add an additional security device, then you need to choose the Bridge mode.

Performance

After setting up the appliance on our test network, we registered and synchronized the device. And before running any tests, we added the required policies and created a machine with different types of viruses (macros, zipped files, etc). We then tried to download these viruses from the machine through the appliance. The security appliance effectively blocked more than 94% of the viruses and displayed a custom message.

We then used a POP3 server to test its anti-spam capabilities and dumped spam emails into it. When we tried to download these emails, the appliance scanned and tagged them. Having the SPX, this lets users send encrypted email to anyone, even those without any kind of trust

infrastructure using our patent-pending password-based encryption technology.

It also has Sophos Sandstorm cloud-sandbox technology to provide protection against ransomware and targeted attacks. Using the Kali Linux we created some of the attacks and it was able to protect the network completely.

As there are pre-defined policy templates so you can use them to protect common applications like Microsoft Exchange or SharePoint quickly and easily. Moreover, it offers protection from latest hacks and attacks.