About the RTA¶
The Sophos Remote Testing Appliance (RTA) is a purpose-built appliance we place on your network to deliver network-based testing remotely: internal penetration tests, vulnerability assessments, and other engagements that traditionally required a consultant on site. It gives the consultant assigned to your engagement the same network vantage point as a laptop plugged into your office, without the travel, cost, and scheduling constraints of an onsite visit.
Built for your engagement, and only yours¶
Every RTA is built for one customer and one engagement. The image you receive comes from a current, patched build and carries unique credentials that work only for your engagement and expire when it ends. RTAs are ephemeral: they exist for the duration of testing (typically a few weeks) and are disposed of afterwards. See Lifecycle and disposal for the full before/during/after picture.
Form factors¶
Most engagements use the virtual appliance, which the guides on this site cover: your engagement lead shares a platform-specific image and your team deploys it on your own hypervisor or cloud. If you have no virtual infrastructure at all, Oracle VirtualBox on a spare workstation is a free, workable host.
Physical and wireless appliances
When hosting a VM isn't practical, or the engagement includes 802.11 wireless testing, we can ship a preconfigured physical appliance or a wireless testing kit instead. These arrive ready to plug in and include a prepaid return label for shipping them back after the engagement. Your engagement lead arranges these; the deployment guides on this site cover the virtual appliance.
Where next¶
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Step-by-step deploy guides for every hypervisor and cloud we support.
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How the connection is secured, who can access the appliance, and the controls you keep.
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Built fresh per engagement, patched if something critical lands, deleted when testing ends.
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The one outbound connection the appliance needs and the firewall/NAC allowances to request.