Sophos XG Firewall Home Edition

[BoraMurdar]

Overview

Our Free Home Use XG Firewall is a fully equipped software version of the Sophos XG firewall, available at no cost for home users – no strings attached. Features full protection for your home network, including anti-malware, web security and URL filtering, application control, IPS, traffic shaping, VPN, reporting and monitoring, and much more.

NOTE: The Sophos XG Free Home Use firewall contains its own operating system and will overwrite all data on the computer during the installation process. Therefore, a separate, dedicated computer is needed, which will change into a fully functional security appliance. Just right for the spare PC you have sitting in the corner!

Features

• Increase your Internet Bandwidth - You can make easy use of traffic shaping to prioritize application traffic over your internet connection and even subscribe to multiple ISP connections to get more bandwidth or resiliency in the event of an outage with one of them.
• Monitor and control family web surfing - Use Web Filtering to stop sites from infecting you with viruses and spyware, keep your children from surfing to bad sites, and get full reporting on the activity in your home. Also setup access schedules or usage quotas for family members who may be wasting too much time online.
• Access your home network from anywhere – Use VPN to access your network remotely from anywhere in the world.
• Stop Viruses - Dual AV scanning engines stop viruses in file downloads, email attachments, and embedded in web sites. Sophos catches them at the gateway, before they can get in to assault your computers.
• And a lot more...

What you need

• Intel compatible computer with dual network interfaces. (Any previous OS or files on the computer will be overwritten when installing the XG Firewall Home Edition)
• Home Edition is limited to 4 cores and 6 GB of RAM. The computer can have more than this, but XG Firewall Home Edition will not be able to utilize it.

 

[Balrog]

I want to try this. As i'm very happy administrator of Smoothwall UTM i will like to check other appliances.

 

[CMLew]

So, can I say that for this software it will overwrite my existing OS.

But does this OS have similar features like a Window or Linux distribution? E.g. can I surf webpage with this comp installed with this software?

Am I able to install/run any other apps apart from XG Firewall?

 

[_CyberGhosT_]

This does not sound at all like something a home user should be using.
Surely they have to know that the average home user is going to run from this.
Sophos has so much more to focus on now, we don't need this version of XG
firewall that behaves in this format. I am sure there are plenty who will disagree
but, watch their support forums fill up as home users download and install this not
realizing what they just did to their OS. I think in just a few months Shphos will pull
this Idea. Lets watch as this plays out.
Just the fact that this takes a full spare laptop or PC to run makes this a few steps back
for where our technology is today, you can do 90% of this with NetBalancer and keep your OS
and dedicate that second Laptop to streaming your favorite movies to your TV
This just sounds so "unpractical"

 

[Balrog]

@_CyberGhosT_ the average user have to understand this is a security appliance and not a OS desktop replacement.

 

[hjlbx]

"The Sophos XG Firewall contains its own operating system and will overwrite all data on the computer during the installation process. Therefore, a separate, dedicated computer is needed, which will change into a fully functional security appliance. Just right for the spare PC you have sitting in the corner!"

Because it does the above, this thread should be taken down; some users who do not fully read what it does are going to be so unbelievably angry when all their data is over-written.

 

[Balrog]

"The Sophos XG Firewall contains its own operating system and will overwrite all data on the computer during the installation process. Therefore, a separate, dedicated computer is needed, which will change into a fully functional security appliance. Just right for the spare PC you have sitting in the corner!"

Because it does the above, this thread should be taken down; some users who do not fully read what it does are going to be so unbelievably angry when all their data is over-written.

But as user it is my responsability to read and fully understand what it does. If not then is my problem, not Sophos's.

 

[askmark]

This is something I would really love to try out but I don't have any spare hardware at the moment

I was thinking of getting a dedicated hardware appliance to protect my home network but unless you spend the big bucks you won't get anything comparable in functionality or features to the product on offer here. This is a great freebie from Sophos.

Has anyone here used it at all and care to share their experiences?

 

[Balrog]

Hello asmark. I used Smoothwall Express (and the commercial brand of it), Endian, IpCop, PfSense. Some of them are working on customer's LANs. At this point i want to try the Sophos alternative as looks very feature rich. Some of the other appliances leaks support for HTTPS filtering, IP group web filtering.

The commercial brand of Smoothwall Express is very feature rich and powerful.

 

[Maziar Ansari]

can I use it as a personal firewall?

 

[Balrog]

can I use it as a personal firewall?

No, it is not intended as a Windows firewall. This is something you needs to put into a separate and dedicate PC.

 

[AtlBo]

Anyone thought of what this could be like in say 5 years? If Sophos develops this to be a home network oriented firewall, I doubt it will be free, but I could see it being very successful. It would be great to be able to share files and remote desktop at home, and I have confidence Sophos could deliver on such a concept. Parental controls should be easy to implement using this platform and also serious IP and http restrictions, combined with, for example, attachment scanning/file scanning to examine if individual files contain executable code...sort of a network sandbox.

 

[jamescv7]

Remember that Sophos target users are mainly from business scale and their firewall edition is simply serves on securing the overall network in an enterprise.

So honestly the Home Edition of Firewall is not an ordinary one.

 

[Balrog]

Anyone thought of what this could be like in say 5 years? If Sophos develops this to be a home network oriented firewall, I doubt it will be free, but I could see it being very successful. It would be great to be able to share files and remote desktop at home, and I have confidence Sophos could deliver on such a concept. Parental controls should be easy to implement using this platform and also serious IP and http restrictions, combined with, for example, attachment scanning/file scanning to examine if individual files contain executable code...sort of a network sandbox.

But, did you test it? You shoud.

 

[AtlBo]

Haven't had the chance. Watched several videos about the setup. Hope to get a crack at it soon.

Remember that Sophos target users are mainly from business scale and their firewall edition is simply serves on securing the overall network in an enterprise.

So honestly the Home Edition of Firewall is not an ordinary one.

Yes, this is 100% accurate. Since Sophos does sell security software, I would like to see them develop this...maybe even a complete hardware package with the software and even optional storage bays. All protected by Sophos, this could be good, although I'm sure it would be expensive. Talk about protected storage and network...

 

[woodrowbone]

The home version firewall is with all the bells and whistles of the business version.

In fact Sophos have two, this the XG, limited to 6 gig RAM and 4 cores I think, but with all the features enabled.

The also have the older version SG (SG is more feature rich than XG), this have all features enabled except the new "Sandstorm" feature, and only allow 50 ip:s on your home network.

Read more here:
SG UTM: Next-Gen Unified Threat Management with Firewall Sandboxing | Sophos UTM 9
and here:
Free Antivirus Tools for Windows, Mac, Android | Free Firewall and Linux AV Security Tool Downloads | Sophos

/W

 

[AtlBo]

Thanks woodrobone. I'll come back to the links when I get around to this. I'm looking forward to it, but it looks like Sophos went off the deep end (in a good way) to think ways to firewall. I get the impression the videos don't do much to explain how to configure the software. However, from looking at the vids, I can see how the free version would be closely compared to the business version.

 

[woodrowbone]

They are the business versions, minus the Sandstorm feature on SG.

If you want something easier to setup and run I suggest you go for Untangle.
They recently made their business version available with all features for only 50 $ a year.

Untangle at Home | Untangle

The ISO you download is free, you can choose to only enable the free features and still have a very powerful UTM firewall as your home router. Or you can set it up as a transparent bridge between your router/modem and switch, filtering all the internet traffic behind it.
It also protects you IoT stuff.
They even have a firmware ready for ASUS RT-AC88U, it´s in the link above.

/W

 

[AtlBo]

Sandstorm looks extraordinarily good. Going to have to look into all the options. This system has the potential to save companies so much money and give home users and laptop users a much higher degree of piece of mind. Thanks very much for passing on the information.

 

[Nnyan]

I'll say that most users that are interested in Sophos UTM or XG will be the users that know what this is not a personal firewall and requires dedicated hardware or a VM. Also this is nothing new as this has been true for years (I stared with UTM back when it was still Astaro) as UTM does the same. I think this is for those that use pfSense, Untangle, ClearOS, Nethserver, etc...

I'm not sure that Untangle is significantly easier to use then Sophos XG. I think the layout for XG is a bit clearer then UTM (which had settings spread out all over the place) but overall I like it better then Untangle (I did like the new dashboard). Unlike some others on the Sophos forums I never did have significant issues but it wasn't really as good as UTM until v16/v16.5 came out. It's good enough that I'm planning on putting v16.5 live for awhile and powering down my OPNSense VM.