Press Release

Press Photo OPNsense 21.1 Marvelous Meerkat

For more information on OPNsense software, see project website: OPNsense.org

Middelharnis., 2021 –
January 28th, The Netherlands

January 28ht, 2021 – Middelharnis, The Netherlands  Deciso® announces the immediate availability of OPNsense® 21.1 named “Marvelous Meerkat”.

The latest release is packed with improvements, new and updated plugins as well as new drivers to support the upcoming official certified OPNsense hardware.

Amongst the improvements are the enhanced filtering mechanism for the firewall live logs and a new serial installer that supports booting from UEFI only systems. Installing on a modern headless system has never been easier.

New features include live traffic graphs as well support for multiple categories in both firewall rules.

For improved security the graphical user interface now defaults to hardened settings with TLS 1.2 as minimum and with strong ciphers.

Organizations and users looking for the latest and greatest on Virtual Private Networking will be pleased to know OPNsense includes IPsec, OpenVPN and also has been supporting Wireguard since 2019.

The Meerkat resembles our community, as there are few animals who work so well together. They are known for standing upright when on sentry duty. These sentinels provide an early warning system against predators with a distinct alarm to alert their pack about the type of danger.

The Meerkat resembles our community, as there are few animals who work so well together. They are known for standing upright when on sentry duty. These sentinels provide an early warning system against predators with a distinct alarm to alert their pack about the type of danger.

This is where the Intrusion Prevention System – that’s at the heart of OPNsense – gets its name from.
Suricata – another name for the Meerkat – has been an integral part of the project since 2016 to protect users against malicious traffic.  A marvelous detection and prevention system provided by the Open Information Security Foundation. This release honors the hard work of the OISF community and introduces new policies to harness Suricata’s power with even more ease.

OPNsense is the fastest growing open-source security platform with an Open Source Initiative (OSI) approved 2-clause or simplified BSD license. Its feature set is extensive and ranges from router/firewall to inline intrusion detection and prevention.

It is the only open source product that comes with the highly valued Proofpoint® ET Pro ruleset at no cost in the form of the ET Pro Telemetry edition.

The project is defined by its innovation through modularizing and hardening, simple and reliable firmware upgrades, multi-language support, hardened security, fast adoption of upstream software updates as well as a large and friendly community.

Version 21.1 introduces new and updated community supported plugins such as the new git backup option, allowing to backup configuration data using git version control.

And with the “Marvelous Meerkat”, the developer’s documentation has been extended with fronted components.

As with every release, the latest security patches have been applied and the latest component versions have been included. 

The mission to make OPNsense the most widely used open source security platform is well on its way.

Deciso is the company that founded the OPNsense project and offers turnkey solutions as well as commercial support and services.

About Deciso
Deciso B.V. (https://www.deciso.com) is a globally operating manufacturer of networking equipment. The company designs and produces complete products for integrators, OEMs and resellers. Deciso believes in the power of open source and actively contributes to the open source community. The company was founded in 2000 and is located in Middelharnis, the Netherlands