How to monitor MAC firewalls from Sophos Central

Hello rehan,

at the moment only the Windows Firewall can be monitored in Central. Can't say if and when it might come - don't think it's high priority (but this is my personal opinion).

Christian 

Hi Christian

Thanks for your answer.  I can set firewall policies for MAC OS on Sophos Mobile which I think enforces the policies to the native firewalls on MAC. Am I correct in assuming this? 

Can the MAC OS native firewalls be monitored and enforced using Sophos Mobile ?

Thanks again and kind regards

rehan

Hi rehan tahir 

Yes, it is possible to configure the inbuilt application firewall of your Mac device from Sophos Mobile. You will need to go to Profiles and Policies > macOS > Device Policy > Add Configuration > Firewall. For more clarity on the settings available for configuring the firewall settings, please visit the following link: https://docs.sophos.com/central/Mobile/help/en-us/esg/Sophos-Mobile/references/ConfigurationFirewallMacOSD.html

thanks Yashraj - have a good day

Hi

I have enabled the firewall natively in MAC by going to System Preferences -> Security & Privacy ( and also disabled all incoming connections). However in the "Device properties" under "Devices", UI in the Sopho Moblie UI, "FirewallEnabled" property is set to "0" instead of "1". 

Please let me know why is there a discrepancy on the status of the firewall as being reported under Sophos Mobile

Thanks and kind regards

rehan

Hi rehan tahir 

I tried to reproduce the issue with my account and Mac device. In my test policy for my Mac device (I named it "Test Mac OS Device Policy"), I have disabled the firewall and allowed Sophos Kernel extensions. Checking the device properties on Sophos Central, I can see that the firewall has been disabled. 

I went on to the device and noticed that even after unlocking the settings for the firewall, I cannot enable it natively and is grayed out. The policy which I received shows that the firewall option is set to disable. This means that once the policy is received on the device and is implemented, settings cannot be changed by the user natively.

Now, when you manually enabled the firewall on your device before Sophos Mobile could do it for you, it might have left it in a broken state. Sophos Mobile tried to enable it for you but it was already enabled and hence the command could not be successfully executed on the device. This might be a reason why it still shows the outdated information in device properties. 

Hi rehan tahir 

I tried to reproduce the issue with my account and Mac device. In my test policy for my Mac device (I named it "Test Mac OS Device Policy"), I have disabled the firewall and allowed Sophos Kernel extensions. Checking the device properties on Sophos Central, I can see that the firewall has been disabled. 

I went on to the device and noticed that even after unlocking the settings for the firewall, I cannot enable it natively and is grayed out. The policy which I received shows that the firewall option is set to disable. This means that once the policy is received on the device and is implemented, settings cannot be changed by the user natively.

Now, when you manually enabled the firewall on your device before Sophos Mobile could do it for you, it might have left it in a broken state. Sophos Mobile tried to enable it for you but it was already enabled and hence the command could not be successfully executed on the device. This might be a reason why it still shows the outdated information in device properties.