The greatly anticipated release of Zenarmor® 1.13 has just arrived and offers important new and improved capabilities that both technical and business decision-makers will find helpful when implementing security solutions to strengthen their overall enterprise cyber security posture.
A brief overview of the updates included in this release are:
- User PIN codes to bypass blocked content via the blocked content landing page
- Policy-based SafeSearch enforcement
- Scheduled advanced reporting
- BrightCloud® Threat Intelligence Integration
- Enhanced RESTful API and improved API endpoints
- General bug fixes and performance improvements
So when you are ready, let’s dive in and take a closer look at these new capabilities.
User and Admin PIN codes to bypass and whitelist blocked websites.
In the previous release of Zenarmor, the ability to create custom blocked landing pages was implemented. These landing pages are presented to users explaining why access to a website has been restricted either as part of a corporate internet usage policy or when protecting a user from a threat detected by Zenarmor’s real-time monitoring.
Zenarmor® 1.13 enhances this capability by giving your security team the ability to create and issue PIN codes that end-users can input on the custom blocked landing page to bypass and whitelist the webpage. This provides an alternative, yet still controlled method of whitelisting websites, without having a member of the security team manually modify the whitelist using Zenconsole.
Two types of PIN codes can be issued, the first being a global admin PIN code, which when used, whitelists the blocked website for all users and endpoints on the network. The second bypass PIN code type is a user specific code, that is issued to a single user allowing only that single endpoint access to the restricted website.
Both bypass PIN code types can be set up to expire after a certain amount of time. This capability can be useful to end-users and IT security team members alike, by providing a quick and controlled means to whitelist websites on the fly, which reduces end-user frustration typically associated with users waiting for IT to manually whitelist the website. At the same time, IT helpdesk staff can offer quick turnaround times by simply providing a PIN code, alleviating the cybersecurity technical staff responsible for managing the organization’s firewall, while still maintaining control.
Policy-based SafeSearch enforcement
SafeSearch functionality provides a means to filter out offensive or inappropriate content from presented search engine results and is available for most of the popular search engines including Google, Bing, Duckduckgo, Yahoo, and Yandex. Usually, this feature is activated on a per-user/endpoint basis. However, with Zenarmor® 1.13 you can activate SafeSearch enforcement on a per-policy basis for all users on your network. This capability is perfect for use in school networks where students can have SafeSearch activated by default, whereas teachers and other staff don’t have SafeSearch enabled. This feature provides IT departments with a convenient and efficient means to control SafeSearch globally throughout the network.
Just as a side note, if you are interested in how Zenarmor can be used to secure and filter content in an educational environment, please check out my previous article:
Why is Zenarmor the perfect content-filtering solution for educational institutions?
Customizable, scheduled advanced reports for all audiences
Comprehensive and customizable advanced reporting has always been one of the great capabilities offered by Zenarmor. With Zenarmor® 1.13, reporting functionally gets an upgrade allowing security teams to automate the scheduled sending of reports. This functionality is useful when it comes to creating and sending reports to multiple recipients at the frequency they need. For example, one way to use this feature is to send management and business decision-makers more high-level business-oriented reports monthly. Alternatively, you could send daily technical reports to your cyber security team, the choice is yours. Regardless of your reporting requirements, Zenarmor now ensures your reports are delivered on time, in PDF format, to their exact audiences with no fuss.
To make this service even better, you don’t have to waste time setting up your own email service and settings to deliver reports, Zenarmor includes a built-in email delivery service with this release.
Increased threat coverage by leveraging BrightCloud® Threat Intelligence
Zenarmor’s existing AI-based threat intelligence protecting your network against over 300M+ websites and domains is without a doubt an impressive standard capability giving you advanced protection and is included in all Zenarmor subscriptions ranging from the Free to Business Edition of Zenarmor.
As of the release of Zenarmor® 1.13, through Zenarmor’s partnership with BrightCloud®, Business Edition, users will benefit from extended protection that includes an additional 1+ billion categorized domains and 4+ billion recorded IPv4/6 addresses. In addition to this, you will also benefit from being a part of a global threat intelligence network made up of over 140 top cyber security vendors using BrightCloud® Threat Intelligence to enrich and extend their threat detection solutions. So rest assured, knowing you have access to the very best threat intelligence available. To date, BrightCloud® has evaluated over 48+ billion domains and adds to this database by analyzing roughly 25,000 threats and URLs daily.
If you are already a Zenarmor® Business Edition subscriber, you will automatically benefit from the BrightCloud® Threat Intelligence database powered by sixth-generation machine learning, which provides your business maximum protection at all times. If you are on a Free, Home, or SOHO subscription, don’t worry, you can still depend on the great threat intelligence that you know and love provided by Zenarmor as standard.
If you are interested in learning more about BrightCloud® please check out the official partnership announcement, or alternatively head over to https://www.brightcloud.com/
Enhanced RESTful API
Zenarmor® has included RESTful API functionality in previous Zenarmor releases for some time already. However, as of Zenarmor® 1.13, the RESTful API has been enhanced by providing developers and integrators with more API endpoints so that they can leverage more of Zenarmor’s functionality, similar to the functionality already provided in Zenconsole.
The API allows for improved integrations with popular MSP automation platforms like ConnectWise and Kaseya or even existing SIEM and XDR solutions that you may already have deployed in your environment.
Are you ready to experience Zenarmor 1.13 for yourself?
If you answered yes to this question, and you are an existing Zenarmor customer, head over to either Zenconsole or your OPNSense dashboard and apply the 1.13 update. If you are new to Zenarmor and would like to explore the great capabilities that Zenarmor has to offer, you can simply sign-up and start your Zenarmor® Business Edition 15-day trial, with no credit cards required.