Sophos harnesses the cloud

IT security and data protection firm, Sophos, has announced the addition of Sophos Live Protection technologies to its Sophos Endpoint Security and Data Protection offering.   This new, cloud-based architecture equips businesses with real-time threat protection and automatic configuration changes to security and data protection policy settings.

“Simplifying the rollout of proactive protection, Sophos Live Protection enables businesses to automatically defend their networks against today’s fast moving threats – such as Fake Anti-Virus and targeted malware – while minimising the IT security management overhead,” says Brett Myroff, CEO of regional Sophos distributor, Sophos South Africa.

Three new protection technologies have been built into Sophos Endpoint Security and Data Protection 9.5 to stop emerging threats from both inside and outside the corporate network.

Sophos Live Anti-Virus stops previously unseen threats by instantly checking suspicious files against an extensive “in-the-cloud” database of known good and bad reputation data – a response is received within seconds, reducing reliance on updates.

Based on SophosLabs’ constantly updating database of more than 11 million malicious URLS, Sophos Live URL Filtering prevents real-time access to URLs that have been identified as hosting malware.  Providing constant protection, Live URL Filtering defends computers against malware attacks whether using a corporate, home or public network.

Sophos Runtime Behavior Detection creates profiles of file characteristics, such as what a file looks like (pre-execution) and what it does when executed (runtime HIPS), enabling accurate identification of malware.  By tracking file behaviour, SophosLabs can scan the database of existing profiles to search for a malware match – immediately alerting the user if one is found.

“While IT teams pay security companies to protect them, many vendors leave customers to decide what to do with suspicious files,” Myroff says. “This Sophos release reduces this noise by addressing the problem head-on. Suspicious files trigger an instantaneous look-up to the Sophos online database of good and bad data, and the file is allowed or blocked. Beta results have been very impressive – new malware is being picked up way ahead of the game, spelling out greater protection with less complexity for users.”

In addition, Sophos Endpoint Security and Data Protection 9.5 extends protection to virtualised environments, supporting Microsoft Hyper-V and VMWare’s  vSphere operating system.

Version 9.5 also comes equipped with enhanced Tamper Protection that prevents any intentional or unintentional disabling of security features such as anti-virus, firewall and system updating.