30-04-2021



You can now utilize XG Firewall to build a complete SD-WAN overlay network in Microsoft Azure’s Virtual WAN, enabling seamless connectivity between workloads, hosts, and locations connected to Azure’s global virtual network.

Azure Virtual WAN is a networking service that brings many networking, security, and routing functionalities together to provide a single operational SD-WAN network. The Virtual WAN architecture is a hub and spoke architecture, with scale and performance built in for branches (VPN/SD-WAN devices), users (Azure VPN/OpenVPN/IKEv2 clients), ExpressRoute circuits, and virtual networks.

Oct 05, 2016 The deployment of the Sophos XG firewall appliance through the new Azure Portal only allows up to two network interface cards. If you will like to have more than two networks connecting to the XG firewall, you’ll need to do a programmatic deployment. A programmatic deployment can be done using one of two methods – Imperative or Declarative. May 10, 2019 The Sophos XG Firewall is mainly designed for Azure-based deployment. With its help, you can protect your Azure workloads against multiple kinds of threats. There are several methods to configure Sophos XG Firewall on Microsoft Azure marketplace. In this demo, we will learn how to configure Sophos XG Firewall using the Azure portal.

It enables a global transit network architecture, where the cloud-hosted network “hub” enables connectivity between points that may be distributed across different types of “spokes”.

Azure regions serve as the SD-WAN hubs, which are fully mesh-connected, making it easy to use the Microsoft backbone for any-to-any type of connectivity.

Azure Sophos Xg

Some of the things that I’ve seen at work, is that Sophos XG VPN users are using one token for Sophos SSLVPN and another for ex. Office 365 services. Both tokens can be in Microsoft Authenticator, but only the one that Office 365 is using, can do the “pop-up”, letting the user easy sign-in, like this. Apr 01, 2021 You can now utilize XG Firewall to build a complete SD-WAN overlay network in Microsoft Azure’s Virtual WAN, enabling seamless connectivity between workloads, hosts, and locations connected to Azure’s global virtual network.

XG Firewall’s integration with Azure Virtual WAN enables you to build a scalable SD-WAN network deployed across the global Microsoft enterprise WAN backbone, while utilizing XG Firewall’s full suite of protection capabilities for securing applications and traffic flows. This greatly simplifies connectivity and can dramatically reduce expenses compared to traditional leased-lines.

If you’re interested in leveraging Azure Virtual WAN with your XG Firewall, we’ve prepared an extensive deployment guide: How to Integrate XG Firewall with Azure Virtual WAN (Secure SD-WAN)

This guide highlights the step-by-step configuration involved in connecting XG Firewalls located at an HQ to an Azure Virtual WAN hub in order to access the virtual networks across multiple availability zones. It also outlines the configuration required for connecting remote offices to the virtual WAN and backhauling traffic through Microsoft’s global network to create the ultimate SD-WAN solution.

If you’re new to XG Firewall, learn more about how XG Firewall can help with your SD-WAN ambitions and goals.

Inspiration for this post, was taken from: https://rieskaniemi.com/azure-mfa-with-sophos-xg-firewall/

Some of the things that I’ve seen at work, is that Sophos XG VPN users are using one token for Sophos SSLVPN and another for ex. Office 365 services. Both tokens can be in Microsoft Authenticator, but only the one that Office 365 is using, can do the “pop-up”, letting the user easy sign-in, like this:

Nonetheless it’s easier for the IT dept. (and the user!) to maintain only one token solution 🙂

See Full List On Community.sophos.com

Here is the auth flow for Azure MFA with NPS Extension:

Nice isn’t it 😉

So how to fix?

Configuring Sophos XG Firewall On Azure - C# Corner

We setup Sophos XG for RADIUS validation for SSLVPN and UserPortal access, and if you use the built-in OTP solution, disable that 🙂

To get started:

  • If you do not have MFA enabled for your Office 365/Azure AD account’s you can enable it through following link: https://aka.ms/mfasetup
  • And of course you need to have set Azure AD Connect to get your on-premise talking with Azure, I will not go into the details with this here, as I assume this is already setup and working 🙂

Let’s go:

  1. Install the Network Policy Server (NPS) role on your member server or domain controller. Refering to the Network Policy Server Best Practices, then you will find this “To optimize NPS authentication and authorization response times and minimize network traffic, install NPS on a domain controller.” So we will go ahead and place this on the domain controller, but remember it’s also possible to do it on a domain joined member server!
  2. Press “Next” and the installation begins:

  3. After installation has ended, go and join the NPS to the Active Directory, right-click NPS (Local):
  4. Download and install the NPS Extension for Azure MFA here:
    https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=54688
    Note: As i did try this on a server with already setup NPS, it failed with the other mechanisms, because of this:
    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/authentication/howto-mfa-nps-extension#control-radius-clients-that-require-mfa

    Control RADIUS clients that require MFA

    Once you enable MFA for a RADIUS client using the NPS extension, all authentications for this client are required to perform MFA. If you want to enable MFA for some RADIUS clients but not others, you can configure two NPS servers and install the extension on only one of them.

    Configure RADIUS clients that you want to require MFA to send requests to the NPS server configured with the extension, and other RADIUS clients to the NPS server not configured with the extension.”

    So the “workround” is to run the MFA for the Sophos on a seprate NPS instance 🙂

  5. After it’s installed, go and follow the configure is like it’s stated here (Find TenantID and run Powershell script):
    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/authentication/howto-mfa-nps-extension#azure-active-directory
  6. Go and configure your radius Client, here it’s the XG:

    Remember the secret, we need it later on 🙂

  7. Create a “Connection request policy”:


    Type here the IP of the XG

    Just set like above, and the rest of the settings, just leave them to their defaults 🙂

  8. Now create a “Network Policy”

    Add a domain group, that shall have this access, to simplify, here I have choose domainDomain Users
    Now the EAP types, XG does only support PAP, as far as I have tested:


    You will get a warning telling you that you have choosen unencrypted auth (locally – not on the Internet!), just press OK.
    Just left the rest to their default’s and save the policy.

  9. Now to create a firewall rule:
  10. Now to setup the XG for this:

    Press ADD:

    Remember to choose RADIUS:

    Fill in as your environment matches:

    Type in the secret you wrote down earlier and create a host object for your NPS, also remember to change the timeout from 3 to 15 secs!

    You can now test is the authentication through NPS and Azure MFA is working, change Group name attribute to “SF_AUTH”

    Press the TEST CONNECTION butoon:

    type in a users username (e.mail adress) and password, and your phone should pop-up with Microsoft Authenticator 🙂

    You should see this soon after you accept the token:

  11. Now head over to the Authentication –> Services section:

    Add the new RADIUS server to:
    – User portal authentication methods
    – SSL VPN authentication methods

    Also make sure that the group your AD / RADIUS users are in, is added to the SSLVPN profile:

  12. Now login to the User Portal and download a VPN client (You cannot use the old ones, if you already had thoose installed)
  13. Now connect through VPN, type in your full email in username and your password, then wait for MS Authenticator to pop-up, accept the token and you are logged into VPN 🙂

Azure Sophos Xg Vpn

Sources:

Related Posts