They’re calling it the Sophos XG Flash Sale, but it’s more like a fire sale. Or, just a giveaway, really.
Sophos has released their latest line of Next-Gen firewalls, the XGS series. This isn’t super-new, the XGS series have been out for a few months. But that means that the XG series, which was Sophos’ flagship firewall line previously, will gradually be phased out. You can read more about the XG and XGS series here. As a result, Sophos is looking to move out all their XG appliances. In this case, they’re practically giving them away.
The terms
The 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.
The differences between the XG series and XGS
Sophos’ new flagship line (XGS) 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 that combines the multi-core CPU with the brand new Xstream Flow processor for 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 should be there, headed for branch offices, remote users, and so on. This trustworthy traffic can now steer towards 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 push to FastPath either automatically, or by your own policies.
Better connectivity
The new XGS series offers a range of built-in and optional expandable connectivity options. Compared to the XG series, the new models offer fundamentally more ports and in some cases more connection options for external modules. Sudden changes to the infrastructure can thus be better mastered with the new XGS firewalls.
You may be thinking to yourself, “wouldn’t the XG firewall included in this promotion have Xstream, though?” The answer is, yes. However, 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.
Finally
So yes, the XGS series are significantly ‘hotter’ that the XG series firewalls. But the XG firewall with Xstream software is a very good firewall, without any doubt. and will serve most SMBs very well. Remember, XG was the front-line, state-of-the-art until just April, when XGS started to come out.
As always, Corporate Armor is ready to answer any questions you might have, and help you in any way we can. This sale lasts only as long as supplies do, so hurry and email us or call 877-449-0458. Thanks for reading!