Sophos Firewall v23 Now Available

After a very active Early Access Program with excellent participation by many of you, the product team is pleased to announce the release of Sophos Firewall v23.  

What’s New: 

Sophos Firewall v23 brings many of your top-requested enhancements in one feature-packed release. From new AI-powered assistance and a modern REST API to streamlined rule management, stronger high-availability protection, expanded identity support, and simpler day-to-day administration, Sophos Firewall v23 is designed to make your firewall easier to manage, automate, and scale, while further strengthening its Secure by Design foundation. 

The new capabilities added in this release fall into five key areas: 

1. AI and Automation:

AI and automation tools are a few of the many highlights of Sophos Firewall v23. You can see these new solutions in action thanks to some helpful videos: 

Sophos Firewall and AI Defense 

Sophos AI Defense is a new Sophos Fusion solution that enables you to understand and control AI use across your environment, combining visibility, risk insight, and clear enforcement in one place. It utilizes Sophos Firewall as a key sensor and enforcement point. See how it works in this short video.

Sophos Firewall AI Assistant 

Use the Firewall AI assistant in Sophos Fusion to work with your firewall rules using natural language chat.  See it in action: 

REST API 

Sophos Firewall v23 implements a modern REST API with token-based authentication and OpenAPI 3.0 support that makes automation and integration easy.  See how it works: 

2. Simplified Management & Greater Resilience 

Sophos Firewall v23 makes day-to-day administration easier and helps keep your network running smoothly, even under demanding conditions. Whether you're managing a single firewall or hundreds, you'll benefit from a redesigned rule management experience, improved visibility, faster performance, and significant enhancements to high availability. 

What's New: 

• Completely redesigned firewall rule management experience
• Hardware-aware high availability monitoring and faster failover detection
• Improved HA stability under heavy load
• Automated firmware update scheduling in Sophos Central
• Faster and more responsive administration interface
• Improved navigation and firewall status visibility for administrators

3. Secure by Design Enhancements

Sophos Firewall continues to build on its strong Secure by Design foundation with enhancements that further reduce your attack surface, improve security visibility, and simplify protection. New capabilities help secure DNS traffic, provide greater transparency into automated security updates, and make it easier to stay protected with the latest firmware and platform improvements.

What's New:

• DNS over HTTPS (DoH) support for stronger DNS security
• Visibility into applied hotfixes and security updates
• Modernized routing architecture and management
• Improved threat response event handling
• Additional platform hardening and security enhancements

Check out the new DNS enhancements:

4. Modern Identity & Access Integration

As many of you continue to adopt cloud and hybrid identity services, Sophos Firewall v23 expands integration options and simplifies authentication. You can more easily connect users across on-premises and cloud environments while improving MFA onboarding and extending support to a wider range of devices and deployment scenarios.

What's New:

• Entra ID support for Synchronized Security
• Google Workspace identity provider integration
• More secure MFA onboarding via email
• Chromebook single sign-on support
• Enhanced support for terminal servers and shared-user environments

See how to set up Google Workspace as an IdP:

5. Enhanced Scalability, Networking & Application Protection

Sophos Firewall v23 includes a wide range of infrastructure and networking enhancements designed to help support your growing environment. From major Web Application Firewall enhancements and a DHCP overhaul to expanded IPv6 support and improved service discovery, v23 delivers better scalability, performance, and flexibility.

What's New:

• Major Web Application Firewall performance and scalability improvements
• Expanded WAF rule capacity and routing capabilities
• New DHCP service architecture
• mDNS reflector for education, campus, and segmented network environments
• Enhanced IPv6 and IPoE connectivity support
• Additional cloud platform deployment options

Summary

This release delivers 30 of your most-requested enhancements, helping you manage and secure your network more effectively. Every Sophos Firewall release continues to add tremendous value:
“Without a doubt, these changes are amazing and highly anticipated. In my opinion, they are even more impactful than many of the features introduced in version 22. It's clear how much effort the team has invested in improving the platform. Congratulations to everyone involved.” - Sophos Firewall community member

A special thank you to everyone who participated in the Early Access Program!

More details

Review the What’s New Guide or Release Notes for full details. 

Get ready to sell v23

Ready to start the conversation with your customers? Find the latest product collateral on the Sophos Firewall page on the Partner Portal, and join the Partner Academy session on November 18 to learn how to position v23.

Get started today

As with every firewall release, Sophos Firewall v23 is a free upgrade for Sophos Firewall customers with Enhanced or Enhanced Plus Support and should be applied to all supported firewall devices as soon as possible.

This firmware release will follow our standard staged roll-out process. The new v23 firmware will be gradually rolled out to all connected devices in phases over the coming weeks. A notification will appear on your local device or Sophos Central management console when the update is available, allowing you to schedule the update at your convenience.

If you want to get a head start, Sophos Firewall v23 can be downloaded directly from Sophos Fusion under the Licensing section of your account.