Recently we wrote a short article on the Sophos XG Flash Sale that’s going on. In a nutshell, terms of the Sophos XG Flash Sale are simple. They apply to every firewall in the XG line. Basically, when you buy any XG firewall with either 2 or 3-years of Xstream protection, you get the XG firewall itself free. Now, there’s a Sophos XGS Flash Sale, too.
And it made sense with the XG firewalls, because Sophos has released their latest line of Next-Gen firewalls, the XGS series. And that means that the XG series, Sophos’ flagship firewall line previously, will gradually be phased out. So why not fire-sale them out?
But doing the same thing with the new XGS line of firewalls (called Sophos Firewall) is really something. It includes every model except the XGS 87/W. This might be a good time to delve a little into…
The differences between XG and XGS firewalls
Sophos’ new flagship line may look similar to the XG series from the outside, but under the hood its’ a completely new hardware platform.
Unlike the XG Series, the new XGS Series features a dual processor architecture. It combines a multi-core CPU with the brand new Xstream Flow processor. That provides serious hardware acceleration. These multi-core processors just make everything faster. That includes heavy-lift security functions like…
TLS 1.3 Inspection
According to the latest statistics, approximately 90% of web traffic is encrypted. Who knew? Problem is, encryption makes traffic invisible to most firewalls. As a result, many organizations simply don’t use the SSL Inspection features on their firewalls. The concern is that SSL Inspection will impact performance. And that affects user experience. Predictably, an increasing amount of malware is taking advantage of this fact. The speedy new processors allow you to use SSL Inspection without sacrificing speed and efficiency.
Deep Packet Inspection
So, Sophos Firewall includes a fast Deep Packet Inspection engine. It scans your traffic without using a proxy, which tends to slow things down. The inspection processing is completely offloaded to the DPI engine. This reduces latency. In other words, it speeds things up.
Application Acceleration
Of course, a lot of your network traffic is important application traffic. Traffic that’s supposed to be there, headed for branch offices, remote users, and so on. This trusted traffic can now be directed to FastPath, which will optimize performance further. This provides extra capacity for intelligently scanning traffic that does need DPI for malware and other threats.
The Xstream Flow processor speeds up your SaaS, SD-WAN. So things like VoiP, video, and other trusted cloud traffic get pushed to FastPath either automatically, or by your own policies.
Doesn’t the XG series support Xstream architecture, though?
Yes. Sort of. In the XG series, the Xstream architecture is entirely software-based. But in the XGS series Sophos has added a hardware layer with the Xstream Flow Processor. This provides a dedicated fast path for app acceleration. All this means less load on the CPU, which can focus all resources on core firewall tasks and deep packet inspection, significantly improving latency and providing much more efficient network protection.
So, the point of the Sophos XGS Flash Sale has less to do with getting people into XGS firewall, and more about Xstream architecture. And Xstream does indeed haul @#%! The XG is still a very good firewall, but the XGS series is significantly hotter.
And as always, Corporate Armor is ready to answer any questions you might have, and help you in any way we can. The Sophos XGS Flash Sale lasts only as long as supplies do, so hurry! and email us or call 877-449-0458. Thanks for reading!