Sophos Workspace Protection has been one of our most successful launches ever, thanks to the fact that it’s an innovative, easy, and affordable solution with a variety of important use cases for protecting apps, data, and workers everywhere.

If you haven’t already, check out our series of use case articles and videos on how Sophos Workspace protection enables Safe GenAI Adoption, Secure SaaS App Control, and Secure Access for Contractors and Guests.

What’s new

The product team is pleased to share a new update to Sophos Protected Browser that makes policy creation easier and improves visibility into how files move through the browser. 

This release introduces a categorized app selector for application groups and adds new logging and reporting for file upload and download activity.  

These updates make Sophos Protected Browser more efficient and effective for everyday administration, whether you're controlling SaaS and generative AI usage or improving visibility into file transfers.

These new features are now available for all customers in Sophos Central and will appear the next time you sign in.

Find the right apps faster and control generative AI easier with categorized selection

To create policies for specific apps in Sophos Protected Browser, you first need to build an Application Group containing the apps you want to control. With more than 30,000 known apps available, finding the right set can be time-consuming. With this update, apps are now organized into categories, making browsing and selection much easier.

These app categories are based on each app's functionality and are designed to help administrators quickly locate similar services. 

They differ from URL categories and can’t be used directly in policy rules, but they make the process of building Application Groups much more intuitive.

We’ve also added the ability to automatically select all apps currently included in the Generative AI category. 

This makes it much easier to create policies that allow or restrict the use of generative AI to specific approved services. 

It’s worth noting that this selection is based on the apps currently assigned to that category at the time you create the group. 

If additional apps are added to the Generative AI category later, existing Application Groups won’t update automatically.

Gain better visibility with file activity logging and reporting

This update also adds new log entries for File Upload and File Download events, providing teams with an early signal when sensitive files are transferred to unsanctioned apps. These events provide better visibility into how users move files in the browser, helping administrators monitor data movement and investigate activity more effectively.

We’ve also added a new built-in report template so you can quickly see where file uploads and downloads are happening across browser users in your organization. The default File Transfers template highlights which apps are seeing the most file transfer activity, and you can also customize and save your own report templates to focus on the data points that matter most to your team. 

For customers using Sophos XDR or MDR, these logs can also be included in Live Discover queries, extending their value into threat hunting and investigation workflows.

These enhancements are designed to make Sophos Protected Browser even more practical for everyday administration, whether you’re building tighter controls around SaaS and generative AI usage or improving visibility into file transfer activity. If you’re already using Protected Browser, we’d love to hear about your experiences and how these new capabilities help your team.

Learn more and share your feedback with the team on the Sophos Workspace Protection Community.