Sophos UTM and Mobile Control – Better together for Mobile NAC

In a recent survey conducted by Sophos on Spiceworks*, 42% of respondents said that Mobile Network Access Control (NAC) was the feature they would most like to have integrated into their next firewall.

Wishful thinking? Not at all – we can offer you that today.

Read on to learn more about how Sophos Mobile Control and Sophos UTM now work better together to protect your network from mobiles running wild.

Data, data, everywhere

People today know no boundaries when it comes to their work location. In many businesses, access to data on the spot has become a competitive differentiator. But with mobile devices running rampant and many companies struggling to know whether they’re breaching compliance rules left, right and center, there is a need to get back some kind of control to prevent data loss.

Long live NAC

Sophos Mobile Control goes a long way towards keeping your data safe on a mobile device with multiple options to set compliance criteria and block, lock and even wipe to your heart’s content.

And the recently introduced version 4.0 takes data protection a whole step further with Mobile Content Management to ensure files are seamlessly encrypted.

But many of our partners and customers have asked us for additional network access controls for their mobile devices directly from the UTM. Some people may have claimed that NAC is dead. But in the mobile world, NAC has experienced a true renaissance – long live NAC!

SMC + UTM = Better Together – How it works

So how do Sophos Mobile Control (SMC) and Sophos UTM work better together? And more importantly perhaps, what will it cost you to get this functionality?

1. Share Wi-Fi and VPN configuration settings from your UTM with SMC

The first thing we’ve done is to save you the effort of having to configure Wi-Fi and VPN settings in both products. Just set up your SSIDs or VPNs in the UTM console and share them with SMC. SMC can then distribute those settings to all your mobile devices. Also, if you make changes, you only have to do so in the one console.

A common usage scenario for this feature would be if you have a password of the month for your internal Wi-Fi. Rather than users having to scan a QR code each month, or tediously enter the cryptic password on a mobile on-screen keyboard (you do have a cryptic password, right?), the credentials would be pushed to them from SMC, meaning they’d be connected in no time. So that saves time and effort in the set up and improves the user experience.

2. Block network access for Wi-Fi or VPN

Sophos Mobile Control hosts a wealth of information about the compliance status of your mobile devices. They could have been jailbroken, have potentially malicious apps installed, or just need to sync with the server. Sophos UTM can now poll SMC at regular intervals to get the compliance status.

If non-compliant devices are detected and if the violation is severe enough to warrant blocking network access – which you specify in SMC – users will either have their access blocked (VPN) or be quarantined (Wi-Fi) until they get back into compliance. There’s nothing quite like preventing access to the data they need to motivate people to get back on the straight and narrow!

Watch our short video to find out more.

To get this great functionality, this is what you need:

Sophos UTM version 9.202 or higher with:

• Network Protection and Wireless Protection subscriptions. If you use IPSec VPN, you obviously will have to have valid licenses for that too
• Sophos Mobile Control version 4.0 or higher

If you already use Sophos UTM but don’t have the right subscriptions today, you might want to consider upgrading to a FullGuard subscription. It offers a huge cost saving over the purchase of the individual modules even if you don’t plan to use them all. If you’re new to Sophos UTM, a TotalProtect Bundle offers the best value for money for hardware, software and support all in one.

Sophos Mobile Control is licensed on a per user basis, so even if your mobile workers have multiple devices, it won’t increase the cost.

What next?

You can simply try any of our products as a free trial, or you can contact us to arrange a demonstration from one of our experts.

To find out more about the features added in UTM version 9.2, check out our recent blog posts.

* Sophos survey 5 – 15 June, 2014, conducted on Spiceworks. 396 respondents.