Central Firewall Reporting EAP 1 Refresh for XG v18 has been released!

Hey Folks,

The EAP 1 Refresh for Central Firewall Reporting (CFR) has been released! The refresh introduces the following minor enhancements: 

• UI Update
• Date Picker
• Operators for Filtering

We encourage all XG v18 EAP users to sign up and experience everything that Central Firewall Reporting has to offer! 

Because this is an EAP release, please keep in mind the following: 

• We’ve attempted to make the release as bug-free as possible, however as is the nature of early access, we cannot guarantee it will be. Therefore, use the feature in production at your own discretion. 
• The Central Firewall Reporting services are actively being tuned for scalability and load over the duration of the EAP. We're keen to hear your experience and perception of the reporting experience.   
• As part of the EAP we’ll continue to add additional features into Central. Expect incremental updates roughly every six weeks. You can find the features in those later builds in the "What’s New in CFR” document. 
• To gain access, you must register on the v18 registration site. You will receive an email with a unique access code including directions for enabling the EAP.   

Note: The Known Issues, Advice to Users and Incomplete Features document has also been updated. 

Firewall Reporting in Sophos Central 

Increasing visibility into network activity through analytics has become vital as organizations strive to gain a deeper understanding of user activities, applications, network events, performance, risks and more in their security environment. Using that knowledge, organizations can implement policy changes to drive efficiencies that enhance productivity while also protecting against cyber threats. 

Organizations need: 

• Deep insight into user activity, application usage and security threats on the network 
• Tools to report and identify trends that require an actionable response 
• Pre-defined, out-of-the-box reports to streamline the report creation process 
• Flexibility to create hundreds of customized report views, tailored to specific needs 
• An intuitive user interface that makes report creation fast and easy 

Solution 

An integral component of Sophos Central, Central Firewall Reporting (CFR) is a cloud-based reporting tool that provides organizations with a powerful set of options to capture network activity through their Sophos Central account and XG Firewall v18. Using the interactive dashboard, administrators can drill down into the syslog data for a granular view that is presented in a visual format for easy understanding. The data can then be analyzed for trends that could lead to gaps in security, requiring policy changes. 

 Key Features (CFR initial launch) 

• Rich, granular data organized into easy-to-understand reports 
• Pre-defined out-of-the-box reports 
• Flexible report table and charts allow users to customize each report and create a library of hundreds of variations 
• At-a-glance view from the XG Firewall for network operational health, policy control events, and all security-driven events 
• Interactive, easy-to-use report dashboard that makes it fast and simple to access detailed reports 
• Visual representation of data elegantly displayed in graphical form 
• Search and retrieval of all log data from the XG Firewall 

And coming soon after General Availability: 

• Create reports that aggregate data from multiple XG Firewalls 
• Save and export reports in multiple file formats to share with others 
• Report scheduling 
• Additional reports 
• And much more! 

Getting Started 

Go to the XG Firewall v18 EAP page, fill out the online form and you’ll have access to the v18 EAP firmware download. Be sure to select the checkbox for CFR in the registrations!  
Please note the XG 86 is not supported in the EAP at this time.   

Once you’re ready to go, we’ve got some great resources to help you get started: 

• “What’s New in CFR” – See the complete feature list with descriptions 
• CFR Admin Help - Read the latest documentation here 
• CFR Evaluation Guide – Learn about the features we’d like you to evaluate 
• CFR Known Issues and Limitations – Get information on any known issues, incomplete features, and advice to users in CFR
• Sophos XG Firewall: How to enable Sophos Central Management

Share Your Feedback 

Communicating your experiences with Central Firewall Reporting is crucial to its success, so we want to hear from you! Please share your feedback via the Sophos Community or through your XG Firewall’s feedback mechanism in the user interface.  Where possible, include screenshots in your community posts so that we can see your experience. 

• How to report a bug? Check out this post that outlines the information needed.

Thank you for taking the time to test the CFR EAP release. We’re excited about this new reporting experience for Sophos XG users and we appreciate your help making it happen!