And Sophos kills off the SUM

I am very disappointed in this news, I recently renewed the licenses on my 31 utm devices trying to buy a few more years before having to replace.  I use SUM to manage all the devices and it works great especially for distributing objects and permitting or blocking sites on the web.  I picked the UTM/SUM setup specifically because it is not cloud based and mostly in-house.  I do not want my firewall settings stored and managed on a public accessible platform, great effort but no thanks.

I am very disappointed in this news, I recently renewed the licenses on my 31 utm devices trying to buy a few more years before having to replace.  I use SUM to manage all the devices and it works great especially for distributing objects and permitting or blocking sites on the web.  I picked the UTM/SUM setup specifically because it is not cloud based and mostly in-house.  I do not want my firewall settings stored and managed on a public accessible platform, great effort but no thanks.

I would consider Central to be "not a public accessible platform" per se. Simply because the architecture of central mandates thinks like MFA, a secure password and is secure built. See: https://docs.sophos.com/central/Framework/security-framework/index.html

Its the same discussion as "whats better: A on premise hosted solution or a public cloud solution?". And from my point of view, i assume you cannot build such a security level like Central uses on premise. 

Does MFA protect against vulnerabilities in the underlying OS or web platform?  Or from backend network connections we have no visibility on?  Application exploits from authenticated MFA users on a different instance?

If I remember correctly, sophos hosts on AWS, correct?

https://techmonitor.ai/technology/cloud/aws-servers-hacked-rootkit-in-the-cloud

To each his own but I would prefer something like SUM for the XG or XGS platform.

Did you look into the Report? This one is actually from Sophos Labs. It is always about, who is responsible for the security. Looking at Amazon (AWS) and Central, there are big steps and effort to keep this secure. I am not sure, if the same kind of energy is used to keep a on premise setup up to date. 

No, it was the first result on a search for "cloud data breach", you can find many more instances if you are interested.

LuCar Toni said:

I am not sure, if the same kind of energy is used to keep a on premise setup up to date. 

And......that doesn't matter because the SUM is located inside my secure networks, not publicly accessible.  That is why I prefer this setup.

Do not think, a network is secure anymore. That is the reason, companies and security provider start to highly invest into Zero Trust. Simply because this is not true anymore. 

See: https://www.sophos.com/en-us/medialibrary/PDFs/technical-papers/sophos-2021-threat-report.pdf 

Or: https://medium.com/technology-hits/zero-trust-is-a-concept-not-a-product-introduction-to-zero-trust-security-architecture-zta-3830d782ef5f

Because if i breach (somehow) your network layer, i can do "everything". 

Brilliant work, Toni, as usual, but even you can't make a silk purse out of this pig's ear.  I fear that this was a decision that the C-suite will regret not rescinding.

Cheers - Bob

LuCar Toni said:

Do not think, a network is secure anymore. That is the reason, companies and security provider start to highly invest into Zero Trust. Simply because this is not true anymore. 

Bingo.  

It was simply a wrong decision to EOL the SUM.
Same kind of wrong decision that preferred the Cyberroam appliances over Sophos/Astaro UTM.