XG Firewall v18 got off to a tremendous start with thousands of customers upgrading on launch day to take advantage of the new Xstream Architecture and other great enhancements.

Today, the product team is pleased to announce a new release of XG Firewall v18, maintenance release 1 (MR1), that is now available for all XG Firewall devices.

This latest release includes all security hotfixes as well as over fifty performance, reliability and stability enhancements and support for our new SD-RED devices.

Upgrading to v18 MR1 is seamless from v17.5 MR6 and above and from any other v18 release version. You will soon start seeing the new release appear in your console with a firmware upgrade notification, but you don’t need to wait, you can grab the new release anytime from the MySophos Licensing Portal: Upgrade Today!

What’s new and in it for you

Watch this brief 5-minute overview of what’s new in XG Firewall v18:

Here are the top new enhancements:

• Xstream Architecture: A new streaming DPI engine, high-performance TLS 1.3 inspection, AI-powered threat intelligence with in-depth reporting, and FastPath application acceleration.
• Sophos Central: Group firewall management and cloud reporting make management easier and provide deeper insights into network activity with flexible report customization tools and a new license for extending your firewall data storage in the cloud.
• Synchronized SD-WAN: brings the power of Synchronized Security to reliably and accurately route application and user-based traffic over preferred WAN links.
• Plug-and-Play High Availability (HA): makes it easy to enable business continuity and adds peace-of-mind – simply connect two XG Series appliances together and you’ll be up and running in no time and now Sophos Central also supports HA pairs.
• Real-time flow monitoring: Get at-a-glance insights into active bandwidth consuming hosts, applications, and users – a fan favorite feature from our UTM 9 platform.
• Expanded notifications and alerts: You will never miss an important network security event whether it’s related to a threat, service, or important performance metric.
• New SD-RED Model Support: With MR1, take advantage of our all-new SD-RED 20 and SD-RED 60 models that provide added performance, modular connectivity, and redundant power for the ultimate solution to remote branch or device connectivity.

Upgrading XG Firewall firmware is easy. Watch this video for a refresher.

Start enjoying the benefits of added visibility, protection and performance with XG Firewall v18 MR1 today!

Migrating from SG UTM

Sophos SG UTM customers interested in taking advantage of all the great new enhancements in XG Firewall can do so for free – anytime. A valid license can be transferred over at no extra charge and Sophos Professional Services is happy to help with migration if desired.  Existing SG Series hardware is fully supported (except for the SG 105 which lacks the minimum required 4 GB of RAM). However, you may want to take this opportunity to consider refreshing your hardware to take full advantage of all the new capabilities such as TLS inspection. Check out this recent article for full details.

Migrating from Cyberoam

Migrating from Cyberoam to XG Firewall v18 is strongly encouraged to get all the added usability, security and performance benefits of XG Firewall. Contact your preferred Sophos partner to inquire about upgrading to the latest high-performance XG Series appliance hardware.

New to XG Firewall

If you’re new to XG Firewall, see why it offers the world’s best visibility, protection and response.