Sophos XG Firewall for Education

August 12, 2020 By BlueAlly

Purpose-built for education.

XG Firewall is optimized for education, delivering unmatched visibility and insight, the ultimate in security and control, and unique threat response capabilities. It brings a fresh new approach to the way you monitor what’s happening on your network, manage your firewall, and respond to threats.

Purpose-Built for Education

XG Firewall includes a number of features purpose-built for education institutions and the challenges you face.

Powerful Web Filtering Policy

XG Firewall uses a powerful but intuitive web policy model that you would normally only find in dedicated enterprise web filtering products costing many times more. It makes managing multiple user- and group-based custom policies a breeze, and there are built-in policies for CIPA and activities like “Not Suitable for Schools” that you can utilize right out of the box and easily modify to suit your specific needs. You also have full control over SafeSearch, YouTube, and file downloads as part of every policy.

Child Safety and Compliance

Governance like the Child Information Protection Act (CIPA) in the U.S., the Safeguarding and Prevent duty of care guidelines in the U.K., and similar initiatives in many other jurisdictions are designed to keep young users safe online. While very well-intentioned, they can pose a significant challenge for many organizations. Fortunately, XG Firewall provides built-in features and policy settings that help organizations get compliant quickly and easily. XG Firewall includes built-in policies for CIPA and pre-defined activities like “Not Suitable for Schools” as well as features like SafeSearch, YouTube restrictions, and Keyword Filtering to enable child safety online.

Context-aware Keyword Filtering

With XG Firewall you can help you identify potentially problematic behavior early on. XG Firewall can log, monitor, or even enforce policies related to keyword lists related to bullying, radicalization, or self-harm (for example). You can schedule reports to identify users at risk and get details about their activities, including what and where they are posting or what sites they are visiting.

Insights Into Top Risk Users

Our unique User Threat Quotient (UTQ) provides actionable insight into user behavior. XG Firewall correlates each user’s surfing habits and activity with advanced threat triggers and history to identify users with risky online behavior. It enables you to immediately take action to address students engaged in behaviors that put themselves or your network at risk. Set up reports to automatically send to teachers or safeguarding officers, keeping them in the loop about atrisk students.

Top-Rated Protection From Threats

Sophos XG Firewall contains all the latest threat protection technologies you need to stop hacks and attacks dead in their tracks. Sandstorm Sandboxing scans all files coming in through the web or email for malicious behavior in a safe environment, using the latest deep learning technology from our Intercept X next-gen endpoint product. Our top-rated intrusion prevention system (IPS) catches any hacker or attack attempting to exploit a vulnerability across the network. And our web protection solution performs JavaScript emulation to catch threats lurking in compromised websites like cryptocurrency miners.

Chromebook Support

XG Firewall supports more authentication methods than most other firewalls including directory services, clientbased, clientless, and of course Chromebooks with an easy-to-deploy agent that enables full user-based policy and reporting for all your Chromebook users.

Synchronized Security

Sophos XG Firewall integrates with Sophos Intercept X to provide the ultimate protection solution at both the network and endpoint while enabling unique Synchronized Security features. Security Heartbeat™ shares endpoint health status in real time between all your endpoints and the firewall, enabling XG Firewall to isolate any compromised or infected system automatically until it can be cleaned up, preventing threats from spreading. It also enables rich insight into all the networked applications on your network that are currently going unidentified because of encryption or evasive behavior. These added visibility, protection, and response benefits are only possible with Sophos Synchronized Security.

Powerful. Simple. Affordable.

Sophos XG Firewall provides all the visibility, security, and controls that education institutions need while making everyday management easy in an supremely affordable package.

Unmatched Visibility and Insight

Sophos XG Firewall provides unprecedented visibility into top risk users, unknown apps, advanced threats, suspicious payloads, and much more. You get rich on-box reporting included at no extra charge and the option to add Sophos iView for centralized reporting across multiple firewalls.

Ultimate Security and Control

Sophos XG Firewall provides all the advanced technology you need to protect your network from the latest ransomware and advanced threats. You also get the most powerful web filtering policy enforcement and protection available, and we’ve made it all super easy to set up and manage.

Unique Threat Response

XG Firewall is the only network security solution that is able to fully identify the source of an infection on your network and automatically limit access to other network resources in response. This is made possible with our unique Sophos Security Heartbeat™ that shares telemetry and health status between Sophos endpoints and XG Firewall.

Incredible Value, Eminently Affordable

We’ve engineered XG Firewall to deliver outstanding performance and security efficiency for the best return on your investment. XG Firewall is consistently rated among the top performers in independent tests, and no other firewall includes more in a single appliance than XG Firewall.

Management Made Simple

XG Firewall has been designed from the ground up to address top problems with firewall management from the past. It all starts with a clean, informative dashboard that greets you as soon as you log in, with traffic-light style indicators immediately indicating what needs your attention the most. XG Firewall also includes incredibly rich and comprehensive reporting tools, built in at no extra cost. And our web filtering policy is second to none in providing a powerful but intuitive set of tools for managing compliance on your network. Educators can even help with the dayto-day management of web policy exceptions for their classroom curriculum.

Get in touch with a Sophos Solutions Specialist today to Learn More!