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Introduction
Using the web admin console
Control center
Current activities
Keep track of currently signed-in local and remote users, current IPv4, IPv6, IPsec, SSL, and wireless connections.
Reports
Reports provide a unified view of network activity for the purpose of analyzing traffic and threats and complying with regulatory bodies. For example, you can view a report that includes all web server protection activities taken by the firewall, such as blocked web server requests and identified viruses.
Diagnostics
This menu allows checking the health of your device in a single shot. Information can be used for troubleshooting and diagnosing problems found in your device.
Firewall
Firewall rules implement control over users, applications, and network objects in an organization. Using the firewall rule, you can create blanket or specialized traffic transit rules based on the requirement. The rule table enables centralized management of firewall rules.
Intrusion prevention
With intrusion prevention, you can examine network traffic for anomalies to prevent DoS and other spoofing attacks. Using policies, you can define rules that specify an action to take when traffic matches signature criteria. You can specify protection on a zone-specific basis and limit traffic to trusted MAC addresses or IP–MAC pairs. You can also create rules to bypass DoS inspection.
- DoS attacks
  DoS attack status allows you to see if traffic limits have been applied and the amount of data dropped after the limit has been exceeded. The firewall applies the traffic limits specified in DoS settings and logs the corresponding events. Data is available for the source and destination in real time.
- IPS policies
  With IPS policies, you can prevent network attacks using rules. The firewall enforces the actions specified in the rules and logs the corresponding events. The set of default policies prevents network attacks for several common types of traffic. You can create custom policies with rules that meet your traffic requirements.
  - Add an IPS policy
  - Add rules to a policy
    Rules specify signatures and an action. You can select default or custom signatures. The firewall matches signatures with traffic patterns and takes the action specified in the rule. The firewall evaluates rules from top to bottom.
- Custom IPS signatures
  With custom signatures, you can protect your network from vulnerabilities related to network objects such as servers, protocols, and applications. You can create custom signatures and later add them to IPS policy rules.
- DoS & spoof protection
  To prevent spoofing attacks, you can restrict traffic to only that which matches recognized IP addresses, trusted MAC addresses, and IP–MAC pairs. You can also set traffic limits and flags to prevent DoS attacks and create rules to bypass DoS inspection. The firewall logs dropped traffic.
Web
Web protection keeps your company safe from attacks that result from web browsing and helps you increase productivity. You can define browsing restrictions with categories, URL groups, and file types. By adding these restrictions to policies, you can block websites or display a warning message to users. For example, you can block access to social networking sites and executable files. General settings let you specify scanning engines and other types of protection. Exceptions let you override protection as required for your business needs.
Applications
Application protection helps keeps your company safe from attacks and malware that result from application traffic exploits. You can also apply bandwidth restrictions and restrict traffic from applications that lower productivity. Application filters allow you to control traffic by category or on an individual basis. With synchronized application control, you can restrict traffic on endpoints that are managed with Sophos Central. Managing cloud application traffic is also supported.
Wireless
Wireless protection lets you define wireless networks and control access to them. The firewall supports the latest security and encryption, including rogue access point scanning and WPA2. Wireless protection allows you to configure and manage access points, wireless networks, and clients. You can also add and manage mesh networks and hotspots.
Email
With email protection, you can manage email routing and relay and protect domains and mail servers. You can specify SMTP/S, POP/S, and IMAP/S policies with spam and malware checks, data protection, and email encryption.
Web server
You can protect web servers against Layer 7 (application) vulnerability exploits. These attacks include cookie, URL, and form manipulation. Use these settings to define web servers, protection policies, and authentication policies for use in Web Application Firewall (WAF) rules. General settings allow you to protect web servers against slow HTTP attacks.
Advanced threat
Advanced threat protection allows you to monitor all traffic on your network for threats and take appropriate action, for example, drop the packets. You can also view Sandstorm activity and the results of any file analysis. Use these results to determine the level of risk posed to your network by releasing these files.
Central synchronization
By synchronizing with Sophos Central, you can use Security Heartbeat to enable devices on your network to share health information. Synchronized Application Control lets you detect and manage applications in your network. Additionally, you can manage your XG Firewall devices centrally through Sophos Central.
Security Heartbeat
Security Heartbeat is a feature that allows endpoints and firewalls to communicate their health status with each other. Find the details on how it works, what different health statuses there are, and what they mean.
VPN
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a tunnel that carries private network traffic from one endpoint to another over a public network such as the internet. VPN allows users to transfer data as if their devices were directly connected to a private network. You can use a VPN to provide secure connections from individual hosts to an internal network and between networks. VPNs are commonly used to secure communication between off-site employees and an internal network and from a branch office to the company headquarters.
Network
Network objects let you enhance security and optimize performance for devices behind the firewall. You can use these settings to configure physical ports, create virtual networks, and support Remote Ethernet Devices. Zones allow you to group interfaces and apply firewall rules to all member devices. Network redundancy and availability is provided by failover and load balancing. Other settings allow you to provide secure wireless broadband service to mobile devices and to configure advanced support for IPv6 device provisioning and traffic tunnelling.
Routing
This section provides options to configure both static and dynamic routes.
Authentication
You can set up authentication using an internal user database or third-party authentication service. To authenticate themselves, users must have access to an authentication client. However, they can bypass the client if you add them as clientless users. The firewall also supports two-factor authentication, transparent authentication, and guest user access through a captive portal.
System services
Use system services to configure the RED provisioning service, high availability, and global malware protection settings. Other options let you view bandwidth usage and manage bandwidth to reduce the impact of heavy usage. Using log settings, you can specify system activity to be logged and how to store logs. Data anonymization lets you encrypt identities in logs and reports.
Profiles
Profiles allow you to control users’ internet access and administrators’ access to the firewall. You can define schedules, access time, and quotas for surfing and data transfer. Network address translation allows you to specify public IP addresses for internet access. You can specify levels of access to the firewall for administrators based on work roles.
Hosts and services
Hosts and services allows defining and managing system hosts and services.
Administration
Administration allows you to manage device licenses and time, administrator access, centralized updates, network bandwidth and device monitoring, and user notifications.
Backup & firmware
Certificates
Certificates allows you to add certificates, certificate authorities and certificate revocation lists.
Logs
The firewall provides extensive logging capabilities for traffic, system activities, and network protection. Logs include analyses of network activity that let you identify security issues and reduce malicious use of your network. You can send logs to a syslog server or view them through the log viewer.
Policy test
With the policy test tool, you can apply and troubleshoot firewall and web policies and view the resulting security decisions. For example, you can create a web policy to block all social networking sites for specified users and test the policy to see if it blocks the content only for the specified users. The results display the details of the action taken by the firewall, including the relevant rules and content filters.
IPS custom pattern syntax
Default file type categories
USB compatibility list
Compatibility with SFMOS 15.01.0
Copyright notice

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Intrusion prevention
With intrusion prevention, you can examine network traffic for anomalies to prevent DoS and other spoofing attacks. Using policies, you can define rules that specify an action to take when traffic matches signature criteria. You can specify protection on a zone-specific basis and limit traffic to trusted MAC addresses or IP–MAC pairs. You can also create rules to bypass DoS inspection.
IPS policies
With IPS policies, you can prevent network attacks using rules. The firewall enforces the actions specified in the rules and logs the corresponding events. The set of default policies prevents network attacks for several common types of traffic. You can create custom policies with rules that meet your traffic requirements.
Add an IPS policy

Add an IPS policy

Go to Intrusion prevention > IPS policies and click Add.
Enter a name.
Optional Select the policy from which you want to clone the rules.
Click Save.

Add rules to the policy.

Related concepts

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