News
Sophos Harnesses the Cloud to accelerate proactive computer protection
June 2010 by Marc Jacob
IT security and data protection firm Sophos 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.
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, i.e. 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.
In addition to the wide range of platforms already supported, 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.
Availability and Pricing:
Sophos Endpoint Security and Data Protection is sold on a per user subscription license - multi-year discounts can be applied - and includes product upgrades, updates, and 24x7x365 technical support. Existing ESDP customers can upgrade to ESDP 9.5 for free.