BOSTON - June 9, 2010 - IT security and data protection firm
Sophos today announced the addition of Sophos Live
Protection technologies to its Sophos Endpoint Security and
Data Protection offering. This new cloud-based architecture arms
customers with the industry's most extensive combination of
real-time threat protection and real- time feedback to security and
application policy settings. Sophos Live Protection simplifies the
rollout of proactive protection for employees inside and outside
the office - allowing them to get the protection they need against
today's fast moving threats such as hijacked websites and targeted
malware attacks - without adding additional IT security management
overhead.
Today more than ever, proactive detection technologies like Host
Intrusion Prevention System (HIPS) and cloud-based malware lookups
are now critical to staying ahead of the escalating threat
landscape. In fact, Sophos now analyzes more than 50,000 new malware
samples daily.
However, within the IT security market, adoption rates of HIPS
technologies have been serially low. According to Forrester
Research, approximately 6 percent of companies in North America
ranging from 20 to 1,000 users currently use HIPS technology and
only 8 percent plan to implement HIPS technology within the next 12
months.
"The security industry has long had behavioural anti-virus and
HIPS, but false positives, complexity, and cost of ownership have
historically prevented widespread use," said Joshua Corman,
research director, enterprise security practice at The 451 Group.
"The realities of Advanced Persistent Threats and Adaptive
Persistent Adversaries require vendors also adapt by investing in,
maturing, and enabling better use of advanced detection
capabilities. We're pleased to see Sophos adapting to meet these
challenges."
Benefits of New, Integrated Protection Technologies
Three new protection technologies have been built into the
Sophos
Endpoint Security and Data Protection 9.5 agent to stop
emerging threats from both inside and outside the corporate
network:
-
Sophos Live URL Filtering - Prevents real-time
access to URLs that have been identified as hosting malware based
upon an URL database hosted by SophosLabs. This database contains
more than 11 million malicious URLS and is growing by 20,000-40,000
each day. Regardless of where the user is - in the office, at home
or using an unprotected Wi-Fi network - they are protected against
the growing number of web-based threats.
-
Sophos Live Anti-Virus - Stops previously
unseen threats faster by instantly checking suspicious files
against an extensive in-the-cloud database of known good and bad
reputation data - a response is received within milliseconds
allowing or blocking known good and bad executables.
-
Sophos Runtime Behavior Detection - Combines
multiple detection techniques and compares results to a database of
existing profiles. Behavioral Genotype™ protection examines files
before they execute and new Runtime Behavior Detection examines
files as they execute. By using these techniques in concert, Sophos
can more accurately proactively identify malware in order to alert
users and automatically resolve the issue.
"Sophos's philosophy has long been to offer advanced security
protection while reducing the security-related challenges IT
administrators face," said Rainer Gawlick, chief marketing officer
at Sophos. "The latest combination of technologies introduced in
Sophos Endpoint Security and Data Protection 9.5 will address many
web-based threats and targeted attacks - a top concern among all
businesses today - without adding any additional overhead for the
customer."
Powered by SophosLabs
The expertise and data behind these technologies is correlated
and analyzed by SophosLabs, the global intelligence network of
Sophos. For 25 years, Sophos has been in the business of analyzing
and protecting against viruses and other security threats. With
more than two decades of experience under its belt, this network
has pioneered an integrated approach to threat protection analysis
- encompassing malware, malicious URLs, and spam - while also
managing and updating rulesets for host-based intrusion prevention
(HIPS), application control, data loss prevention, and device
control policies. With the unveiling of Sophos Live Protection,
SophosLabs extends its innovative heritage of addressing threats
and data concerns by leveraging automated systems and
bi-directional data exchange to produce protection on three
levels:
-
Protection - Offers faster malware
identification and blocking, as well as assisted remediation.
-
Profiling - Integrated HIPS and bi-directional
intelligence exchange provides a baseline understanding of system
and file behaviors to non-disruptively learn and ultimately alert
on suspicious activity with much greater accuracy.
-
Prevention - SophosLabs consultative role with
all its customers helps to define actionable security policies
based on global intelligence and local understanding, preventing
configuration errors or broken applications.
"Sophos continues to implement new technologies without
increasing operational overhead," said Will Wilson, director
information systems at Guardian Real Estate Services LLC. "Since
I've implemented Sophos on our corporate endpoints, it's been
apparent that the tight integration of technologies is more
efficient than our previous solution and it especially gives me
peace of mind that SophosLabs does the heavy lifting in terms of
fine-tuning HIPS, maintaining our application and device control
lists and delivering real-time threat protection, so that I can
focus on other critical areas of my job."
Additional Benefits in Sophos Endpoint Security and Data
Protection 9.5
Additional benefits to Sophos Endpoint Security and Data
Protection 9.5 customers include extended platform coverage and
enhanced tamper protection.
Sophos already supports the widest range of platforms on the
market and this latest release has virtualization covered as well
by supporting Microsoft Hyper-V and VMWare's vSphere operating
system.
Version 9.5 also comes equipped with enhanced Tamper Protection
that prevents users - be it intentional or unintentional - from
uninstalling or disabling security features such as anti-virus,
client firewall, and updating on their computer.
Availability and Pricing
Sophos Endpoint Security and Data Protection 9.5 is sold on a
per user subscription license - multi-year discounts can be applied
- and includes product upgrades, updates, and 24x7x365 technical
support. Premium and Platinum Support are available for an
additional fee. Sophos Endpoint Security and Data Protection
customers can upgrade for free.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.