Follow these recommendations if you are new to XG Firewall. You learn how to secure the access to your XG Firewall, test and validate it, and finally how to go live once you feel comfortable.

The control center provides a single-screen snapshot of the status and health of the security system.

Keep track of currently signed-in local and remote users, current IPv4, IPv6, IPsec, SSL, and wireless connections.

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.

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.

System graphs page displays graphs pertaining to system related activities for different time intervals.

Rules and polices enable traffic flow between zones and networks while enforcing security controls, address translation, and decryption and scanning.

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.

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.

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 protection lets you define wireless networks and control access to them.

Manage email routing and protect domains and mail servers. You can configure SMTP/S, POP/S, and IMAP/S policies with spam and malware checks, data protection, and email encryption.

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 protection allows you to monitor and analyze 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.

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.

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.

A route provides a device information so that it can forward a packet to a specific destination. You can configure static and dynamic routes on XG Firewall.

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.

Use system services to configure the RED provisioning service, high availability, and global malware protection settings.

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.

You can define and manage system hosts and services.

Administration allows you to manage device licenses and time, administrator access, centralized updates, network bandwidth and device monitoring, and user notifications.

You can manage the configuration, firmware versions, hotfixes, and pattern updates.

Certificates allows you to add certificates, certificate authorities, and certificate revocation lists.

Logs provide insight into network activity and system events that let you identify security issues and see which of the configured rules apply. You can send logs to a syslog server or view them through the log viewer. Using data anonymization, you can encrypt identities in logs and reports.

The Download Client page contains links to download all the clients you might need.

You can download remote access IPsec and SSL VPN clients to your Windows, macOS, and iOS devices.

This page displays the overall Internet Usage of the user.

You can allow or block emails from specific senders by specifying their email addresses or wildcard addresses.

Policy overrides allow you to temporarily unblock websites that are blocked by web policies.

The menu Hotspots allows cafés, hotels, companies, etc. to provide time- and traffic-restricted Internet access to guests.

This page describes how to sign in using a one time password.

Use this menu for the following settings;

Use this menu to configure and manage various system settings.

Use this menu to configure the following routing options:

This page describes the CLI console and the various commands available in the base console.

Device management allows you to reset the firewall configuration to factory default, check the firmware versions currently installed, access the advanced shell, and flush reports stored on the appliance.

VPN Management allows you to regenerate RSA keys and restart VPN services. RSA keys are used for authenticating IPsec VPN connections for both user and site-to-site connections.

Reset allows you to reset your XG Firewall to factory default settings. Resetting to factory default settings does not affect registration.

A DHCP server can provide optional configurations to the client. Sophos XG Firewall provides support to configure following DHCP Options as defined in RFC 2132.

The Control center shows the features in use, and the health and security of the network..

You can add existing Active Directory users to XG Firewall. Add an AD server, import groups, and set the primary authentication method.

You want to configure and deploy a connection to enable remote users to access a local network. The VPN establishes an encrypted tunnel to provide secure access to company resources through TCP on port 443.

You must meet the following requirements before HA can be configured.

How the virtual MAC address is assigned and how packets flow through an HA cluster.

How to use QuickHA to configure an active-active HA cluster.

How to use QuickHA to configure an active-passive HA cluster.

How to use interactive mode to configure an active-active HA cluster.

How to use interactive mode to configure an active-passive HA cluster.

How to verify that HA has been configured.

Status messages that you see when HA is configured.

Actions you can perform to manage your HA cluster effectively.

You can update the following settings when HA is active, and it won’t result in downtime.

How XG Firewall firmware upgrades work when HA is turned on.

How to troubleshoot HA issues.

You can install XG Firewall as a virtual or software appliance.

You can deploy the XG Firewall virtual appliance on the Microsoft Hyper-V platform.

You can install the XG Firewall virtual appliance on the Nutanix Prism platform.

You can deploy the XG Firewall virtual appliance on the KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) platform.

You can deploy the XG Firewall software appliance on custom hardware over Windows and macOS systems.

You can deploy the XG Firewall virtual appliance in a VMware ESX or VMware ESXi environment.

You can deploy the XG Firewall virtual appliance on Citrix XenApp platform.

You can activate XG Firewall and register it.