Sophos today announced a major refresh of its network Security Gateway hardware with the availability of the new Sophos SG Series appliances. These high-performance hardware appliances - based on the 4th generation Intel® Core™ processors – deliver up to four times the speed of the previous UTM generation appliances and leapfrog competitive offerings, as proven in recent independent testing.

“The new Sophos SG Series appliances are the fastest UTM and Next-Gen Firewall devices we’ve ever produced,” said Guenter Junk, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Network Security Group, Sophos. “They run our latest operating system, version 9.2, and are optimized to get the most out of latest performance innovations from Intel to ensure our customers and partners get an unrivalled performance and protection combination.”

The new SG Series includes models to meet the requirements of small offices to large, distributed enterprises. These 1U appliances are available today in the mid-range 200, 300 and 400 models.  They all deliver over 10 Gbit/sec firewall throughput to easily handle the demands of multi-layered protection. The SG Series is the 6th generation of Sophos security gateways built on an Intel® architecture, to enable Sophos customers to quickly benefit from the frequent performance and protection enhancements. They utilize Intel® technologies including high-speed LAN interfaces, high volume Solid State Drives and AES-NI acceleration.

“By using Intel® Architecture, Sophos has been able to use the performance gains we’ve been able to deliver with the 4th Generation Intel® Core™ processors which delivers improved software processing architecture,” said Bob Ghaffari, Director, Communications and Storage Infrastructure Division, Intel. “Sophos has been able to see dramatic performance improvements by unlocking Intel’s core processor capabilities to make fast, intelligent decisions.”

The SG Series run the latest Sophos UTM 9.2 operating system which features over 150 enhancements including new Advanced Threat Protection and SPX Email Encryption functionality. Designed to run on an Intel architecture, version 9.2 can also be deployed on Intel compatible servers as virtual appliances and in the cloud using Amazon Web Services.

Bruce Kneece, Chief Technology Officer at Convergent Information Security Solutions, said, “Our team was heavily involved in the UTM 9.2 beta program.  From the outset we liked what we saw - added performance and simplicity across the board.  Version 9.2 running on the SG Series hardware is a true winner.  It’s easy for us to recommend it to our customers.”

Additional information on all of the features in Sophos SG Series appliances and Sophos network security solutions is available at: www.sophos.com/accelerated.