Sophos Central Update - Role-based access control and numerous wireless enhancements

Many new and interesting features have been implemented at Sophos Central in recent months. Especially Sophos Central Wireless has been improved. With this blog post we would like to inform all Central users about the most important new features.

1. Sophos Central Wireless

Anyone who already has a Sophos Central Wireless licence can look forward to a very comprehensive update. The functionality has been extended considerably.

You can now set daily passwords for your hotspots, which limit your customers' use of the hotspot, and set up isolated guest networks without having to change your installation. You can also enjoy fast roaming, dynamic VLAN and MAC-based access control.

Also new is "Band Steering", which ensures that each wireless client uses the most appropriate band, ensuring optimal performance for everyone. The "Airtime Fairness" feature also allows you to control that each wireless client receives the same bandwidth.

2. Sophos Central Endpoint

SLet's start with some good news. Application Control is now available for Mac! You can now control which applications are allowed to run on Macs, just like on Windows computers. Starting with version 9.6 of Sophos Anti-Virus, Macs will use the settings in their current application control policy.

For Windows users, there is unfortunately no new feature at this point, but only the notice that Sophos is removing support for Windows XP and Server 2003 from the program.

3. Sophos Central Intercept X

Also for the relatively new product "Intercept X" there are already two small innovations to announce. First of all, everyone can be happy with a "Sophos Central Endpoint Standard License", because now Intercept X can also be run in parallel with the standard version (previously only possible with Endpoint Advanced).

Update: Sophos Central Endpoint Protection is no longer available as a standard or advanced version. Sophos has restructured its endpoint products a little.

The second little news concerns all Mac users who can sign up as beta testers for CryptoGuard. Just login to your Central Account, click on your account name in the upper right corner and select "Early Access Programs".

4. New role-based access control for better collaboration with audit logs

Sophos Central now includes new, predefined user roles. This enables role-based access control (RBAC) to provide a precise view of the existing audit log function at the permission level. The following roles are now available:

• super admin
• admin
• help desk
• read-only

How these roles differ is explained in this video.