These new offerings include Managed Protection Security Services (MPSS) Firewall Management with 24/7 monitoring that allows MSPs of any size to offer managed firewall services backed by SonicWall’s SonicSentry Network Operations Center (NOC) team. Delivered through the unified, cloud-native SonicPlatform, the service establishes a new industry standard by dramatically reducing cyber exposure, simplifying operations, and maximizing visibility, all backed by expert, always-on security teams and reinforced by a groundbreaking cyber warranty.

“SonicWall’s new standard for cybersecurity marks a pivotal moment in our evolution as an innovator expanding into a platform-based cybersecurity leader,” said SonicWall President and CEO Bob VanKirk. “As we continue to listen to our partners and evolve with their changing needs, we are consolidating fragmented tools into one secure, scalable, and smart platform. With this launch, we are bringing together industry-leading firewall threat performance, cloud-based ZTNA to replace legacy VPNs, co-managed NOC and SOC services and an industry-first cybersecurity warranty so MSPs have every tool they need to ensure the businesses they serve are safe in a scalable and cost-effective way.”

SonicWall is bringing together the tools MSPs need to deliver layered, AI-driven security, from next-generation firewalls and endpoint protection to secure remote access and advanced policy control, managed in one intuitive interface. Designed to eliminate fragmented tools and reduce operational complexity, SonicWall is making it easier than ever for MSPs to offer secure, scalable and smart solutions:

• Secure:
  • Gen 8 Firewalls (NSa 2800/3800): Mid-enterprise, high-performance NGFW built for more demanding SMB environments with advanced threat protection.
  • Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA): Raising the bar relative to implementation and ease of use with a one-click ZTNA connector for secure, simple, policy-based access with dramatically improved network performance and security versus legacy VPN.
  • Managed Protection Security Services (MPSS): Backed by the SonicSentry NOC team, the new MPSS bundle extends our partner’s bench with a team of network security professionals to ensure firewalls are configured, deployed and updated correctly to provide the best threat protection possible. MPSS is a must-have service from SonicWall that will fast become the industry standard for firewall management.
• Scalable:
  • NSM 3.0: SaaS and on-premises platform offering unparalleled visibility and efficiency with harmonized cloud/on-box management.
• Smart:
  • SonicPlatform: A unified, cloud-native platform for centralizing management of all SonicWall appliances, services, and third-party integrations.
  • SonicWall AI for Monitoring & Insight (SAMI): Embedded AI/automation to streamline management, speed resolution, and reduce alert fatigue.

“Over the past two years, we’ve focused on listening to our partners and addressing their challenges as cyberattacks accelerate, response times lag and cybersecurity solutions grow increasingly complex,” said SonicWall Chief Product Officer Peter Burke. “As a result, we have dramatically improved the features and scalability of our firewall management platform and integrated them into a unified platform for account, security and network management that should simplify use and make partners more efficient. By consolidating end-to-end management and delivering key capabilities for scale and security, we’re empowering partners to focus on growth, expanding their services, increasing profitability, and delivering greater value to their customers.”

The launch includes enhanced support through SonicSentry, SonicWall’s global Managed Extended Detection and Response (MXDR) team, and MPSS. Built for MSPs, these co-managed services allow them to profitably deepen their bench and extend their service capabilities with 24×7 monitoring, health checks, patch management, and optimized firewall deployment.

Security is no longer just about protection; it’s about trust and resilience. When combined with SonicWall’s partnership with Cysurance, SonicWall deployments can qualify for a tiered cyber warranty of up to $1 million, the industry’s first offering of its kind. Managed deployments through MPSS double the coverage for participating customers.

“SonicWall’s MPSS will allow MSPs to deliver top-tier security to customers without the burden of constant firewall management,” said Meriplex Channel Manager Greg Starr. “By offloading the complexities of firewall management, SonicWall partners will be able to deliver premium security services backed by 24/7 expert support and enhanced cyber warranty protection. This not only strengthens client trust but also opens new revenue opportunities for us as a partner, allowing us to scale and grow more efficiently.”

SonicWall’s next-generation solutions are designed with the unique needs of MSPs in mind:

1. Multi-Tenant Architecture: Manage multiple clients efficiently through one platform.
2. Flexible Subscription Licensing: Monthly/annual options support the MSSP model.
3. Ecosystem Integration: Seamless third-party integrations for operational efficiency.
4. End-to-End Coverage: From endpoint to edge, SonicWall delivers centralized protection and compliance.

“The Middle East, Turkey, and Africa region faces unique cybersecurity challenges as digital transformation accelerates across our diverse markets,” said Mohamed Abdallah, Regional Director META at SonicWall. “Our new solutions empower regional MSPs to deliver enterprise-grade protection while reducing complexity and operational overhead. The MPSS offering is particularly valuable for our partners who need to scale securely while maintaining profitability. With SonicWall’s unified platform approach and co-managed services, we’re enabling our META partners to stay ahead of evolving threats while focusing on business growth.”

A few hours ago, @falconfeeds.io, an X (formerly Twitter) handle that tracks cyber attacks had posted that Fawry was possibly a victim of ransomware as seen below:

LockBit #ransomware group has added 2 new victim to their #darkweb portal.

– Amber Hill Group
– Fawry #China #Egypt #lockbit #databreach #cyberattack pic.twitter.com/LP9yFJJ12w

— FalconFeeds.io (@FalconFeedsio) November 8, 2023

At the time of publishing this news article, Fawry’s website was still offline.

In response to these claims, Fawry released a statement saying, “The company immediately conducted an investigation into its servers and live broadcast. Based on the tests conducted by the company, it has been found that the servers serving customers and banks have not been subjected to any breaches. The company also confirms that no financial or banking data of customers has been leaked. Furthermore, the company asserts that it adheres to the highest standards of cybersecurity in accordance with the requirements of global regulatory authorities.”

The solutions represent the next evolutionary step for the F5 Distributed Cloud Services platform, which enables customers to easily integrate network operations, application performance optimization and troubleshooting, and visibility through a single management console.

The new offerings include Distributed Cloud App Connect, which provides an integrated stack approach through a single console to combine comprehensive app networking with full app security, faster provisioning, and ease of use. In addition, Distributed Cloud Network Connect makes it highly secure and simple to deploy connectivity across cloud locations and cloud providers.

The solutions come hot on the heels of F5’s 2023 State of Application Strategy (SOAS) report, which found that 85% of organizations operate distributed application deployments, spanning traditional and modern architectures and multiple hosting environments. “Distributed deployments add operational complexity and cost, obscure visibility, and increase the surface area for potential cyberattacks,” said Mohammed Abukhater, RVP for META at F5. “F5 can now deliver a platform-based approach that is cloud-agnostic and purpose-built to meet the needs of traditional and modern apps—all without increasing complexity or losing granular control and necessary visibility.”

F5 will also showcase its latest security capabilities, including new machine learning enhancements to provide F5’s cloud security portfolio with advanced API endpoint discovery, anomaly detection, telemetry, and behavioural analysis. “F5 customers can now strengthen their security posture with a continuously improving analysis engine and unified policy enforcement. These capabilities enable secure app-to-app communications through validated and monitored APIs, thereby reducing the time security teams spend correcting false positives and accelerating time-to-deployment for new services,” the company said.

Highlights include:

• Enhanced API Security Provides Greater Protection for Modern Apps. F5 delivers API auto-discovery, policy enforcement, and anomaly detection as part of a unified WAAP service, simplifying operations and enforcement through a single console for both app and API protection. Since static signature-based controls are insufficient for protecting API endpoints due to their dynamic, evolving nature, F5 Distributed Cloud API Security utilizes optimized machine learning for automatic API discovery, threat detection, and schema enforcement.
• AI as an Essential Element of App Security. F5 has introduced AI-driven web application firewall (WAF) capabilities, including unique malicious user detection and mitigation capabilities that create a per-user threat score based on behavioural analysis that determines intent. This enables security operations to choose between alerting or automatic blocking to mitigate an attack that would otherwise go undetected by static signatures. All traffic is monitored and proactive defences are applied based on malicious user behaviour that can be correlated across Distributed Cloud WAAP deployments. The new functionality also provides false positive suppression, making it easier to block bad traffic without accidentally blocking legitimate users, and streamlines operations by reducing the time necessary to enable specific app protections.

F5 is expanding its managed service offerings via:

• • Distributed Cloud WAAP Managed Services, enabling F5 customers to access the experience and expertise of the F5 SOC to manage WAF, bot defence, and DDoS protection. Through a shared console, customers have the ability to seamlessly move between a self-service or managed service model as the needs of their apps and approach to app security change.

• • Distributed Cloud Managed Service Portal, enabling F5 service provider partners to build and tailor their own managed service offerings based on the leading security capabilities of F5 Distributed Cloud WAAP. This approach lets partners manage Distributed Cloud WAAP on behalf of their customers without sacrificing visibility, resulting in new revenue sources and value-added services while extending the overall reach of the solution.

“F5 is increasingly standing out for its ability to secure apps in a multi-cloud environment,” said Abukhater. “On the one hand, you have networking players that have multi-cloud capabilities, but they don’t have security. Then you have security players that have capabilities in SaaS and in the cloud, but they are not multi-cloud. To get their security capabilities, you have to put your apps in their walled garden, which is not sufficient either because apps are more and more distributed to ensure the best performance. Digital services that don’t meet the expectations of end-users cost companies millions of dollars in lost sales. F5 was built to solve this problem.”

In other news set to inform the GITEX agenda, F5 NGINX has announced a new subscription option that adds enterprise-level capabilities and support to the hugely popular NGINX Open Source web server, which currently powers over 400 million websites. The Open Source Subscription is a bundle that includes enterprise support to navigate regulatory requirements, enterprise features to address a wide range of traffic management and identity use cases, as well as fleet management for risk reduction via simplified NGINX administration.

“NGINX Open Source is known as the developer’s Swiss army knife,” added Abukhater. “Whether you need a web server, reverse proxy, API gateway, Ingress controller, or cache, NGINX has you covered. However, there was one thing NGINX Open Source users kept telling us was needed: enterprise support. This is why we expect our subscription option to have a big and immediate impact across the world.”

Cybersecurity approach to returning deployment choices to the customer while solving real-world use cases faced by SMBs, enterprises, governments, and MSSPs. SonicWall’s core cloud solution offerings:

• Solve security and connectivity challenges for cloud-native and hybrid environments.
• Secure access to cloud and on-premises applications and virtualized workloads through modern zero-trust capabilities.
• Protect increasingly distributed and remote workforces through powerful virtualized security layers and zero-touch capabilities.
• Simplify threat detection and response by unifying security events and analytics in a single cloud-based dashboard, allowing easy visualization and management of high-risk alerts.

“The modern IT environment is rife with complexity that drives security and connectivity challenges, which can be further complicated when organizations require hybrid environments comprised of physical, virtual, and SaaS offerings, and private and public cloud solutions,” said IDC Research Director Chris Rodriguez. “Cybersecurity vendors that support these deployment options add tremendous financial and operational flexibility for their customers, and are also well suited for organizations that are in different stages of their cloud journey.”

SonicWall’s cloud innovation is driven by the need to solve complex security and connectivity challenges by delivering power, flexibility, and choice to customers and partners. SonicWall has collaborated with organizations worldwide to build some of the most secure and robust hybrid networks.

“The University of Pisa connects and secures a wide and distributed network of systems, users, applications and services to ensure our institution can provide the highest levels of on-campus and remote learning,” said University of Pisa CIO Antonio Cisternino. “It’s imperative that we’re able to use the same trusted security controls, regardless of how we deploy them. Through their growing range of virtual, cloud and hybrid offerings, SonicWall gives us that choice and flexibility without sacrificing the security standards we require to protect and enable students, faculty, and staff.”

SonicWall ensures organizations are able to set their own deployment paths and cloud migration timelines — not forcing them into a rigid vendor-first approach. By providing cloud-based (e.g., virtual firewall and VPN), as-a-service (e.g., ZTNA, FWaaS), and on-premises (e.g., firewalls, VPN) options, SonicWall empower customers to deploy what works for their architecture — and adopt cloud transformation at their pace.

These real-world hybrid environments are secured using a cohesive mix of virtual, cloud, and on-premises offerings, including SonicWall NSv virtual firewalls, Cloud Edge Secure Access zero-trust security, appliance-free SMA virtual private networks (VPN), and Cloud App Security to protect SaaS applications. Organizations are able to further scale and extend distributed environments by simultaneously deploying security across multiple locations — with minimal IT support — using Zero-Touch Deployment capabilities.

With the influx of work-from-home access, companies require a simple and secure way of connecting their workforce to resources they need — wherever they’re located. SonicWall embraces zero-trust security as a tenet of cybersecurity in a perimeter-less, cloud-first reality. SonicWall helps organizations easily and quickly connect remote users to on-premises resources, cloud-hosted applications, branch offices and public clouds.

In as few as 15 minutes, SonicWall Cloud Edge Secure Access — the company’s zero-trust network access (ZTNA) offering — quickly scales security beyond the perimeter through modern zero-trust principles. This results in logical trust zones that authenticate every user, device and location for secure access to only the specific services and resources they require.

New in SonicWall Capture Security Center 3.0, Unified Insights brings analytics from across SonicWall products, including physical and virtual firewalls, wireless access points, switches and endpoint security products into a single, customizable dashboard. This provides a central, easy-to-use location for monitoring environments and troubleshooting incidents, eliminating the need to multi-task across different consoles.

Paired with SonicWall Analytics, Capture Security Center 3.0 can transform large volumes of data (spanning tens of thousands of firewall nodes) into actionable insights and defensive actions against hidden risks across networks, applications and users — all with the visibility, precision, speed and scale of the cloud.

Regardless of deployment strategy, SonicWall ensures organizations can identify and block both known and unknown cyberattacks across traditional networks, public and private cloud infrastructure, and virtual environments by seamlessly integrating SonicWall physical and virtual firewalls when and where it makes sense for your business. The foundation of this ecosystem integrates with SonicWall’s cloud-based Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) multi-engine sandbox service to stop advanced cyberattacks, including never-before-seen malware and ransomware.

Service providers need to understand their clients’ IT networks and automate everyday tasks like adhering to specific security policies, meeting client service-level agreements (SLAs), generating specific reports and managing their billing. However, juggling multiple tools to monitor network performance and manage devices is time-consuming. With network management complexities and security threats increasing exponentially, MSPs need a single solution that can offer high scalability, security, quick setup, easy navigation, holistic features, seamless client onboarding and affordable pricing.

“Having worked with the MSP market for more than 10 years, ManageEngine is committed to this market and understands the demand for a unified IT management solution,” said Mathivanan Venkatachalam, vice president of ManageEngine. “To meet this demand, we’ve developed RMM Central by combining the capabilities from different products to offer holistic features, and we plan to launch similar products down the road. Using these solutions, service providers can optimize productivity with operational efficiency and provide exceptional service to their clients.”

“RMM Central is an all-powerful, comprehensive IT management companion for MSPs to manage and monitor multiple client accounts, domains and networks from a unified, easy-to-use console,” said Boobala Krishnan S, solutions delivery manager at Soft Solutions, a ManageEngine partner based in New Zealand with early access to RMM Central.

A Unified Solution for MSP Network Management
With the launch of RMM Central, ManageEngine provides MSPs with a single tool that delivers 360-degree visibility into all managed client networks. RMM Central’s highlights include:

Seamless network performance monitoring: Identify and fix performance issues like faults, alarms and outages before they become significant problems and cause downtime.

Automated, proactive IT security: Detect and deploy missing patches, make fault management foolproof, customize security policies and implement configurations for each client network to fortify them.

Centralized asset management: Manage all hardware and software assets, meter software usage, manage software licenses as well as detect and blacklist malicious applications across all managed devices.

Instant remote troubleshooting: Remotely connect to devices, coordinate with end users on voice and video calls during a troubleshooting session and collaborate with multiple technicians simultaneously to achieve SLAs faster.

RMM Central is available immediately at https://mnge.it/rmmc. Pricing starts at $1,195 for 50 devices per year. A fully functional, 30-day trial is also available, as well as a free edition that efficiently manages up to 25 devices.

“Governments and other large enterprises are more challenged to defend large-scale networks against rapidly evolving and increasingly sophisticated threats amid the COVID-19 crisis,” said SonicWall President and CEO Bill Conner. “These new and enhanced solutions offer organizations an elastic and scalable cloud model to enable leaders to close critical security gaps with robust, enterprise-grade threat protection using next-generation technology. As the cyber arms race continues to escalate, SonicWall looks to equip organizations with proven security at a low total cost of ownership and high-security efficacy.”

Powered by SonicOS 7.0, the new SonicWall NSa 3700 firewall delivers a modern UX/UI, advanced security controls, plus critical networking and management capabilities to increase visibility and help defend against today’s increasingly targeted attacks. With the new NSa 3700, organizations gain much needed multi-gigabit protection and enterprise-grade threat performance with one of the lowest total costs of ownership in its class. Offering 22,500 connections per second, supporting up to 750,000 concurrent DPI connections and up to 3,000 site-to-site VPN tunnels, the NSa 3700 ensures security is scalable across the largest environments.

“Designed to deliver three times the performance and scalability compared to the previous generation while reducing the TCO, the NSa 3700 is well positioned to provide safety and productivity to organizations that have experienced exponential growth in such a short time span,” said SonicWall Senior Vice President of Engineering and COO Atul Dhablania. “Daily business operations should go unhindered by the ever-growing number of VPN connections in the new normal, where working form home has exponentially increased the demand and scalability requirements as employees simultaneously try to connect remotely to the corporate infrastructure. The NSa 3700, running the new SonicOS 7, delivers the technology to boost security throughout fast-moving organizations while inspecting more connections per appliance to reduce costs.”

As reported in the 2021 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report, the government sector saw a 21% increase in ransomware attacks last year, making it a rising target for cybercriminals as work environments adapted to changes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the new CSa 1.2, the award-winning SonicWall Capture Security appliance (CSa) 1000 can now be deployed without the need to connect to external resources, which is important for organizations operating air-gapped networks.

The CSa 1000 allows government and compliance-conscious organizations to deploy the
SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) service and patented Real-Time Deep Memory Inspection (RTDMI) on-prem. With RTDMI, CSa 1000 discovers and stops thousands of previously unseen malware samples each day. The CSa product line is currently in the process of receiving final approval for Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS-140-2) certification, a standard accepted widely by governments and regulated industries around the world.

To help business and security stakeholders mitigate hidden risks across networks, applications and users, SonicWall Next-Generation Analytics 3.0 transforms and delivers threat data from its global network of over 1.1 million sensors into actionable guidance via an information-rich executive dashboard. Analytics 3.0 allows organizations to mitigate suspicious behavior upon discovery and find threats quickly with a 25% faster response time. New enhancements to Analytics enable it to take advantage of cloud elasticity to scale on-demand, delivering fast response times to changing workloads. This new and enhanced cloud-native architecture provides enhanced reliability and redundancy.

To easily adhere to the latest security standards, SonicWall cloud-native security management has been updated to provide more visibility and control than ever before. With the updated SonicWall Network Security Manager (NSM) 2.2, administrators have a centralized location for configuring policies at the device or template level, making it easy to provision Layer 3-7 controls via a single rule for every firewall.

NSM also helps simplify certificate management across the full firewall population and streamline rollbacks. It also allows users to choose their preferred two-factor authentication method (app or email) for receiving their authentication code. As networks rapidly expand, so does the need for consolidation, cost savings and streamlined security management. SonicWall Wireless Network Manager (WNM) 3.5 unifies visibility and management by including SonicWall network switches and SonicWave wireless access points into a single solution.

With SonicWall Switches now available in the WNM network hierarchy, it is easier than ever to securely monitor and manage both access points and switches from a single interface to streamline processes and reduce the potential for misconfiguration.

Organizations have distributed data and workloads across both cloud environments and on-premises data centers. As a result, IT teams have to deploy, manage, and secure increasingly complex and hybrid networks. And even though many organizations have moved many of their workloads into the cloud, the majority of them still operate hybrid environments.

Hybrid environments allow organizations to keep important data on-premises. This allows them to maintain full control over sensitive assets, while also taking full advantage of the scalability and agility the cloud provides. However, as organizations become more hybrid and distributed, their security needs to be able to span across all environments.

As applications, resources, devices, and workers work from anywhere, networks need to be able to adapt in real-time. Workflows now often span physical data centers as well as multiple cloud environments; applications follow users regardless of where they are connecting from or what device they are using, and data and other resources need to be securely accessed by any user on any device in any location. Security needs to be able to adapt and scale to meet these new requirements.

Five Essential Security Functions to Hybrid Networks
To properly protect and defend these hybrid environments, organizations should look for security solutions that provide the following critical functions:

• Broad: Security solutions need to support a distributed security model where the exact same security solutions can be deployed in any environment.
• Integrated: All of the various security solutions deployed across the network need to be able to see and work together as a single system to detect threats and respond to them in a coordinated fashion, regardless of where they occur.
• Fast: These security functions need to operate not just at the speed of business, but at the speed of threats as well.
• Automated: Anomalous and malicious behaviors need automated responses.
• Security-driven Networking: Security-driven Networking weaves security and networking into a single, integrated system. This enables them to establish and enforce zero-trust access, dynamic network segmentation, and unified enforcement anywhere, on any device, in any location, without introducing security gaps or performance lags.

Success Requires Networking and Security to Function as a Single Solution
The majority of today’s security solutions are simply not fast enough, nor smart or responsive enough, don’t operate in enough places, and can’t adapt as quickly as today’s business requires. This is especially true in multi-vendor environments with disparate security solutions that don’t integrate when deployed. This lack of integration makes it impossible for organizations to securely use the flexible network environments they need to compete effectively.

Instead, these organizations need a security platform, like the Fortinet Security Fabric, designed to span, adapt to, and protect today’s dynamic environments. If they can’t, their business will not be able to keep up. And that is critical in today’s digital business environment, where the difference between success and failure can be measured in microseconds.