Sophos Partner Roadshow 2023

After three years, we were finally back at a Sophos Partner Roadshow. After the pandemic, we stopped attending offline events, but we wanted to meet people again and see them without beauty filters. The new features were limited, but there are some upcoming functions to look forward to.

Agenda

As at an Apple keynote, everyone was first thanked, and then growth figures including market forecasts for the coming years were presented.

This was followed by storytelling and analogies to bring the threat situation and possible protection technologies closer to the audience.

Then there was an outlook on the roadmap, but more on that later.

Finally, in various presentations, possible cyberattacks were presented in detail once again, and it was explained how Sophos products can help here.

Managed Detection and Response

We all certainly remember the time when Sophos heavily promoted Intercept X. Now the focus is on MDR. Feedback from existing customers indicates that Sophos is conducting active telephone and email campaigns to promote MDR, which annoys some.

But as energetic as Sophos’ marketing is, the product and service are indeed excellent, and we can truly recommend it unconditionally to everyone!

Even if Sophos Threat Advisor was still mentioned in the presentations. The product is End of Sale next month.

Sophos WiFi 6 Access Points

The Wi-Fi 6 Access Points will be available in August. We will be able to provide you with the prices in July. If you don’t want to lose a second, you can register on our contact form for the waiting list, and we will send you an offer or information as soon as we have the prices and they are available.

We are dedicating a separate post to the Sophos AP6 Access Points, in which we explain all the details in detail, as we have had a test device since January and have been able to gain experience.

The most important data on the new Access Points:

A total of five new Access Points with Wi-Fi 6 standard will be available.

2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequency band

• Sophos AP6 420
• Sophos AP6 840

6 GHz frequency band

• Sophos AP6 420E
• Sophos AP6 840E

Outdoor with 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequency band

• Sophos AP6 420X

The new Access Points will no longer be manageable via the firewall, but only via Sophos Central or directly via the Access Point web interface or the app.

Sophos Central is of course the recommended way here. Nevertheless, as with the Switches, there is a subscription, which will be about 10% of the Access Point price.

Roadmap

The roadmap is a very tricky topic for certain Sophos people (not the technicians) who take it more lightly. If you’re in the tech bubble, you’re familiar with this from large companies. There’s a keynote, and it’s reported which software features can be expected until the next keynote in the following year. It’s openly discussed.

At Sophos, people are a bit more cautious. Although there is a roadmap, they don’t want it to be public because the features on it might never come. We have seen this many times in the past, and some customers cannot deal with it, and some Sophos employees also have problems with it.

I know that many readers would like some food for thought here to see what is happening at Sophos and with the products they have purchased. If nothing happens for a long time and you wait for improvements release after release, but nothing happens, you quickly switch to a competitor at renewal time. Currently, Fortinet is doing well and is also well-positioned at Gartner.

Without being allowed to disclose details here, as we have been muzzled and are tired of arguing our point with Sophos, I will leave it at that and summarize the information that is known but perhaps not to everyone, and also say what is not coming.

Firewall

The next major release Version 20 should be released in the next 7 months. The Early Access Phase will start towards the end of the year.

• Finally, the GUI will also be adapted for widescreen monitors, and the annoying white space will disappear.

All that remains is the annoying jumping assistant, which fortunately can be deactivated.

• The ZTNA Connector will then come directly to the firewall, making the topic interesting for many smaller companies without a hypervisor or KVM. Unfortunately, the connector is limited to a stingy 15 GB of traffic per user per month, which again makes it unattractive for many.

Switches

The Sophos Switches have been available since December 2021. Unfortunately, there is no news here regarding the integration of MDR or Synchronized Security. Many would also like a core switch here, but this is currently not an issue at Sophos.

Conclusion

The roadshow was great for us in that we could finally chat informally with people again without delay or poor camera images. We were of course already familiar with the product information. This is the standard we set for ourselves, as we deal exclusively with Sophos products every day.

Nevertheless, there are mixed feelings. On the one hand, Sophos has developed a solid ecosystem that is now being diligently worked on and constantly improved. On the other hand, Sophos has angered many customers with long development times without prospects, product discontinuations, and price increases.

Nevertheless, we are confident at this point that, since the legacy products have been or will soon be phased out, future developments will come faster and will no longer take years. The platform’s foundation has been laid, and individual products like MDR are already phenomenal. Others like Switches, ZTNA, Firewall still need a few updates and will then also be.

Feedback

We welcome detailed feedback on what you currently like and what features you miss. We are happy to forward the feedback to Sophos, collect all suggestions, and create a blog post with the most frequently requested features, or more precisely, the features that would make Sophos products better.