Sophos small business solutions: disabling the client firewall
Regardless of how much testing you did before deployment, problems during rollout or updating may force you to temporarily disable the Sophos small business solutions version of the Sophos Client Firewall.
- When you disable Sophos Client Firewall, the Windows Firewall is not automatically re-enabled.
- Unless you have a hardware firewall for your network, or you disable your internet connection, this poses considerable security risks.
If you disable Sophos Client Firewall, your current configuration will be kept. You can export it and then import it onto a test computer for troubleshooting.
What to do
You can allow all traffic across the network, or on a single computer, by changing the configuration. To re-enable the firewall, reverse the actions listed below.
1. Sophos Control Center
To do this across your network
- Open Sophos Control Center.
- In the left hand pane, select 'Configure firewall'.
- In the welcome screen, click 'Next'.
- In 'Enable firewall', deselect 'Turn on the firewall (recommended)'.
- Click 'Next' and 'Finish' to implement the change.
Alternatively, to disable the firewall from Sophos Control Center, select Action|Advanced firewall configuration, and in the General tab select 'Allow all traffic'. Click 'OK'.
2. Individual workstation
To do this on an individual computer
- Right-click the firewall icon in the System tray.
- Select 'Configure'.
- In the General tab, select 'Allow all traffic'.
- Click 'OK'.
If you need more information or guidance, then please contact technical support.
- Article ID: 16784
- Created: 26 Jul 2006
- Last updated: 9 Oct 2008
