Press Releases

Browse our press release archive

08 Dec 2003

Dear Deidre gets virus advice from Sophos

Sophos secures PCs for The Sun's problem page team

Dear Deidre
Deidre Sanders protects her business with Sophos Anti-Virus

Sophos, a world leader in anti-virus and anti-spam protection for business, today announced that Dear Deidre, the UK's best-known problem page, has selected its anti-virus software to provide automatic protection against viruses, worms and Trojan horses.

Published in The Sun since 1980, Deidre's column has established more than eleven million loyal readers a day, with trained counsellors responding to every single letter received. The agony column receives approximately 1,500 letters from readers each week, with two-thirds currently arriving by email. This growing reliance on email has meant that the Dear Deidre team has increasingly become exposed to the risk of virus infection.

Deidre's team was dissatisfied with its previous anti-virus protection as it caused application conflicts and even allowed infection from the Sircam virus. It chose to switch to the award-winning Sophos Anti-Virus along with the Sophos Enterprise Manager automatic update tool, as it was easy to install and keep up-to-date, even for those with little technical knowledge or time to devote to maintenance. The quality and availability of Sophos's customer support was also a major factor in the final decision.

"Over the past few years, we have seen more and more people choose to email us rather than use snail mail, so any disruption to our email service has an immediate negative impact on our readers," said Deidre Sanders, the problem page editor. "When our previous anti-virus solution let the Sircam virus through we were out of commission for four days. This was disastrous as we pride ourselves on timeliness, and when a reader's problem is urgent, we often need to reply within minutes."

"Small businesses want a product which is easy to use, and value for money from a company with a good reputation," said Oliver Carter, UK sales manager at Sophos. "Ideally they would like something that can be installed and forgotten about, something that will be updated automatically, and has an inclusive technical support service which will guide them through if there is a virus outbreak."

With as many as 800 new viruses emerging each month, it is vital to keep anti-virus protection constantly updated against the latest threats. Enterprise Manager allows businesses to automate anti-virus software updates and even specify the time and frequency of these downloads. This provides them with full control of their anti-virus protection. The application downloads both the most recently issued virus identities and Sophos software updates from a dedicated corporate website, ensuring that even during periods of heavy web traffic, updates via Enterprise Manager continue to arrive at the scheduled time.

About Dear Deidre

Dear Deidre, which appears daily in The Sun newspaper, is the UK's foremost agony column, with up to 11 million readers. Deidre Sanders, editor, is based in Bedfordshire and has a team of five trained counselors to respond to every reader enquiry received.

Read more about how Dear Deidre protects itself with Sophos Anti-Virus.

About Sophos

More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.

Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.