What's New in Sophos UTM Connected (UTM 9.1)
Our latest release, Sophos UTM Connected, lets you protect your users on the move against web-based threats and strengthen your wireless connectivity. At its heart is the software version 9.1 which is engineered to make our proven protection faster and even easier to use. Why Sophos UTM Connected? It’s all about creating ultra-fast wired and wireless connectivity in a secure, reliable way.
Surfing Gets Safer
When users are accessing the Internet through your corporate gateway and Sophos UTM Web Protection is in place, you can easily control which websites users can access. Now we're extending web URL filtering into our UTM Endpoint agent. Even if your users are surfing from a coffee shop, they are protected from infected and inappropriate websites as though they were in the office. You have full control to block, allow or track access to a wide range of content categories. It’s web protection that works fast from anywhere users are surfing. It increases defense against the biggest source of infection—the web outside the office.
Wireless Gets Stronger
Sophos UTM already acts as a wireless controller to centrally manage our powerful Wireless Access Points. And now, we’re extending functionality to improve signals and reach devices that don’t even have wireless connectivity. The Sophos AP 50 can be used to extend signals, either by acting as a wireless repeater or wireless network bridge extending coverage to areas where an Ethernet jack is not available. All you need is a power outlet and it receives and repeats the signal.
Scanning Gets Faster
UTM Connected (9.1) scans quickly and securely. Our new Intrusion Prevention Scanning is now twice as fast by making better use of the multi-core architecture. And by using a new AES encryption policy (AES-GCM) with our new hardware, we can boost VPN throughput to more than 6 Gbps on the new UTM 625. You’ll also see our core antivirus scanning getting faster too.
Connectivity Gets Better
With the UTM Connected release, we’ve introduced more connectivity options, making it easier to implement a failover and load balancing strategy. It’s easy to setup multiple VPN tunnels between two sites. This lets you use the same rules for load balancing and failover of traffic between IPSec VPN tunnels as you can for any MPLS, DSL or Cable connection. You can even use both concurrently in load balancing mode to provide automatic fault-tolerance and bandwidth sharing.
Administration Gets Easier
There are many other enhancements in the new 9.1 version of the UTM software and hardware. These changes that will make administration easier and will help more organizations benefit from all of our security capabilities. You can read about all of them in the Sophos UTM blog.
RED Gets Refreshed - Hardware accelerated encryption
A completely new chip inside the latest Sophos RED 50 lets us increase the rate at which data is encrypted and sent. A remote office daily backup that may have taken hours could now take minutes. And with two wide-area-network interfaces, the RED 50 gives you load balancing and failover protection options too.
Other recent releases
UTM 9.0 includes:
Endpoint Protection
Now you can also protect endpoints with our UTM. Our innovative approach uses the LiveConnect cloud service. This means you can always manage all your endpoints, no matter where they are or how they’re connected. Your computers are kept up-to-date and you can roll out new policies at any time.
Integrated Sophos Anti-Virus engine
We’ve significantly improved the performance of our antivirus scanning. And, now we’re using two commercial antivirus engines. So you can run different antivirus scanners on your gateway and on your endpoints.
HTML5 VPN portal
Let your users connect to internal resources wherever they are and on whatever device they’re using. Our browser-based portal uses HTML5, giving access through applications like VNC, remote desktop, SSH and many more. There’s no software to install and it’s perfect for users with smartphones and tablets.
Wireless hotspot support
An easy way to set up your guests and visitors with Wi-Fi access. The UTM creates vouchers, defining how long people have access, time restrictions and even how much data they can use. And it’s simple for users to get access through a self-service web portal.