General9.03.2012

Sophos positioned in Gartner’s 2012 Magic Quadrant for UTM

IT security and data protection company, Sophos, has announced it has been positioned in the “Leaders” quadrant of Gartner’s 2012 Magic Quadrant for Unified Threat Management (UTM). The quadrant is based on an assessment of a company’s ability to execute, and completeness of vision.

According to the report, the Leaders quadrant contains vendors at the forefront of making and selling UTM products that are built for midsize business requirements. The requirements necessary for leadership include a wide range of models to cover midsize business use cases, support for multiple features, and a management and reporting capability that’s designed for ease of use.

The report adds that vendors in this quadrant lead the market in offering new safeguarding features, and in enabling customers to deploy them inexpensively without significantly affecting the end-user experience or increasing staffing burdens. These vendors also have a good track record of avoiding vulnerabilities in their security products. Common characteristics include reliability, consistent throughput, and a product that’s intuitive to manage and administer.

Sophos UTM eliminates the complexity of deploying and managing a variety of point solutions to secure businesses against viruses, spam and hackers. It combines essential security solutions within a single flexible appliance, providing centralized control through an easy-to-use console. In response to growing customer needs, Sophos recently introduced UTM cloud capabilities via the Amazon VPC (Virtual Private Cloud), enabling customers to easily host and run server infrastructure in a secure, scalable cloud.

Gartner states that, “Especially under the current economic conditions, most SMBs have strong IT budgetary and staffing constraints. This causes them to highly value ease of deployment and use, strong local channel support and flexible pricing.”

“It is increasingly difficult for organisations of all sizes to create secure network infrastructures—due to wireless networks, branch offices, cloud computing and increased mobile device usage. Sophos’s goal is to provide complete security solutions that allow organisations to protect their expanding networks while simplifying security management,” says Brett Myroff, CEO of Sophos distributor, NetXactics.

“Being positioned as a leader in the Gartner UTM Magic Quadrant demonstrates that Sophos is delivering on this goal.”

To download a complimentary copy of this report, click http://www.sophos.com/magicquadrant.

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