OPNsense is a user-friendly, fast-track, open-source FreeBSD-based firewall and routing platform. This software offers features that are generally available from costly commercial firewalls, with the added benefit of open and verifiable sources. The firewall provides users, developers, and organizations with an advantageous environment through transparency. The development of this project is driven by a strong focus on security and code quality.
The solution offers a variety of components, such as:
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Weekly security updates. These updates provide the user with the ability to reach new emerging threats in a timely manner through small increments.
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Two major releases every year. These yearly releases are on a fixed release cycle and provide organizations with the ability to plan ahead of an upcoming upgrade.
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A roadmap of instructions. Each major release provides a guide and a set of clear goals.
A team of professionals developed OPNsense. Other professional and experienced software architects, engineers, and developers are encouraged to join in the development of the solution to make it as successful as possible. OPNsense offers a variety of rich features with each release. Each upgrade is based on FreeBSD for continual, long-term support and utilizes a freshly advanced MVC framework based on Phalcon. OPNsense is committed to helping businesses, school networks, remote offices, hotels, and other markets in keeping their data protected.
OPNsense Core Features
OPNsense continually offers a free, complete, high-end security platform with new releases and features. With each release, OPNsense focuses on providing more unique and better security features in a timely manner. These features include:
- Captive Portal
- Built-in reporting and monitoring tools including RRD Graphs
- Network Flow Monitoring
- Traffic Shaper
- Support for Plugins
- Granular Control Over State Table
- Dynamic DNS
- Two-factor authentication throughout the system
- Netflow Exporter
- Encrypted Configuration Backup to Google Drive
- Forward Caching Proxy (transparent) with Blacklist Support
- Stateful inspection firewall
- DNS Server & DNS Forwarder
- High Availability & Hardware Failover (with configuration synchronization & synchronized state tables)
- DHCP Server and Relay
- Virtual Private Network (site to site & road warrior, IPsec, OpenVPN & legacy PPTP support)
- Intrusion Detection and Prevention
- 802.1Q VLAN support
Reviews from Real Users
OPNsense is a favorite security solution among reviewers for a number of reasons. Two of those reasons include the user-friendliness of the solution, which makes it easy to use, and its ability to easily scale.
For many, a user-friendly solution is essential. FiorindoDi A., a system administration specialist at a tech vendor, says, "The graphic user interface is very good and it is user-friendly, which makes the product easy-to-use."
Peerspot reviewers speak of the scalability of the solution. For example, an anonymous cloud and infrastructure manager at a venture capital and private equity firm reviewer notes, "OPNsense is easy to scale when running on the hardware."
