What’s new in Sophos XG v17.5 release?

In this huge release, appealing features for educational institutions including New Web Policy options and Chrome Authentication are included.  

Here’s a quick overview of the key new features in v17.5: 

• Education features such as policy-based control over Safe Search and YouTube restrictions, block-page overrides, and Chromebook authentication support 
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• Synchronized Security features including Lateral Movement Protection to prevent threats from spreading on the same network segment and Synchronized User ID to eliminate the need to integrate with Active Directory for user identification 
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• Email features with Sender Policy Framework (SPF) anti-spoofing protection and a new MTA based on Exim which closes a couple of tops requested feature differences with SG UTM 
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• Wireless APX access point support offers support for the new Wave 2 access points, providing faster connectivity and added scalability (and will come shortly following the main v17.5 release in MR1) 
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• Sophos Central Management of XG Firewall with new features for backup and firmware management, as well as a new zero-touch deployment option 
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• IPS protection is enhanced with the Cisco Talos IPS pattern library and more granular categories 
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• Management enhancements including enhanced firewall rule grouping with automatic group assignment and a custom column selection for the log viewer
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• Client authentication gets a major update with a variety of new enhancements, such as per-machine deployment, a logout option, support for wake from sleep, and MAC address sharing 
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• VPN and SD-WAN failover and failback including new IPSec failover and failback controls and SD-WAN link failback options 
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• Sophos Connect IPSec VPN client, free for all XG Firewall customers, that makes remote VPN easy for end users (not part of v17.5 but being made available at the same time for early access)
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• Airgap support enables XG Firewall to be updated via USB in situations where XG Firewall can’t get updates automatically via an internet connection due to an “airgap” or physical isolation (coming shortly following the main v17.5 release in an MR) 

Barracuda WAF (WEB APPLICATION FIREWALL)

The Barracuda Web Application Firewall combines a reverse-proxy security architecture with application acceleration. SMEs and other enterprises looking for a good-enough WAF at a decent price point should consider this product, along with those seeking support for public cloud platforms.

The Barracuda Web Application Firewall can deal with complex threats with inspection capabilities that don't affect throughput. It combines a reverse-proxy security architecture with application acceleration. Features include web application security, API security, mobile application security, app backend security, application acceleration and delivery, and identity and access control. The company offers a series of appliances for SMEs through large enterprises. The vendor delivers its Web Application Firewall line in physical or virtual appliances. It is also available on the Microsoft Azure, AWS and VMware vCloud Air platforms.

Barracuda WAF Features Rated

Security:

Barracuda WAF protects applications from the attacks that are categorized by OWASP, as well as additional attacks such as DDoS, Slow Client, session hijacking, and XML/SOAP-based attacks. This is applicable to both HTTP and HTTPS application traffic. Security Policies define matching criteria for requests and specify what actions to take when a request match.

The company reports 190,000 transactions and 70,000 connections per second, as well as 2.8 million concurrent connections and throughput of 10 Gbps for the highest end model. Testing by Miercom, a third party testing organization, achieved the numbers claimed in the hardware datasheet. Miercom also said the WAF detected 100% of cross-site scripting, SQL injection, system command injection and file inclusion vulnerabilities; and achieved HTTP performance of 7.6 Gbps throughput (this was not for its highest end model).

Implementation

The average time to onboard an application in passive security enforcement is two minutes. The time taken to fine-tune the security policy depends on the complexity of the application but on average is less than one hour. Miercom tests noted the WAF can be deployed in one hour from unboxing to full operation.

Conclusion:

Barracuda WAF is one of the top notch security product which helps its customers to provide the necessary security to customer to run their business smoothly.

Layer7-ESG

Custom Policies: 

Custom policies can be developed for compliance or governance reasons. It’s important to know that these custom policies will take precedence over the spam blocking rules which are being delivered automatically through the Energize updates. Custom content filters can be set for both inbound and outbound mail based on the subject, message bodies and type of file attached. 

 

Barracuda Email Security Gateway provides comprehensive set of protection with its built-in and custom configuration, which gives it protection against any sort of email borne threats that might try to disrupt the inbound or outbound email flow or lead to compromization of users’ accounts. 

Facebook Outage

A Server Configuration change was the reason of massive Facebook outage. 

Facebook users around the world reported issues logging into and posting on the site as well as on Instagram and WhatsApp throughout the day on Wednesday. The outages lasted about a full day and was Facebook’s longest downtime ever. 

In a statement Thursday, the company blamed a “server configuration change that triggered a cascading series of issues” for the outages. The company said its services were coming back online. 

“Yesterday, we made a server configuration change that triggered a cascading series of issues,” said a Facebook spokesperson. “As a result, many people had difficulty accessing our apps and services. We have resolved the issues, and our systems have been recovering over the last few hours. We are very sorry for the inconvenience and we appreciate everyone’s patience. 

Facebook previously acknowledged the outage in a tweet Wednesday, saying, “We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps. We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.” 

It later confirmed the problem was not the result of a DDoS attack, which refers to a Distributed Denial-of-Service attack in which a hacker overwhelms a site by flooding it with fake traffic. 

 

Facebook shares were relatively unchanged Wednesday afternoon but slid about 1.8 percent Thursday morning. 

Reports of problems with Facebook peaked at over 12,000 worldwide late Wednesday according to Down detector, a website where users can report problems on apps and websites. Down detector listed over 300 reports Thursday morning, and many people reported their access had been restored, but Facebook has not yet confirmed the issues were resolved. 

Users reported a variety of problems, from being unable to load the site at all to not being able to post comments. Facebook users posted screenshots on Twitter showing error messages when they tried to load the app. When loading the site, some users got a message on the screen saying “Account Temporarily Unavailable.” 

At a Facebook event at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas Wednesday, the company’s head of video products cracked a joke when he ran into technical issues. 

“Today is the technical difficulties day for Facebook, I guess,” cracked Paresh Rajwat, in a reference to the company’s worldwide service outage when his presentation’s video failed to include audio. Rajwat was announcing new features for Facebook’s Watch video service. 

Technical issues with Facebook have historically posed serious problems for advertisers who use the platform and even other websites. 

Facebook previously experienced an outage of its tool for advertisers in November at a time when marketers were trying to place ads for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 

In 2013, Facebook experienced a glitch which took several websites down with it thanks to the prevalence of its login feature across the internet. When users tried to log into a website with their Facebook profile, they were directed to a Facebook error page, Business Insider reported at the time. The glitch, which only lasted a few minutes, affected websites including The New York Times and CNN, Business Insider reported. 

INVESTIGATION 

Separately, the New York Times reported on Wednesday that U.S. federal prosecutors were conducting a criminal investigation into data deals Facebook struck with more than 150 technology companies such as Amazon.com Inc and Apple Inc. 

Facebook is facing a slew of lawsuits and regulatory inquiries over its privacy practices, including ongoing investigations by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission and two state agencies in New York. 

A spokesman for the social network said the company was cooperating with investigators in multiple federal probes, without addressing the grand jury inquiry specifically.