News
Sophos virtualises secure web gateway protection
January 2012 by Marc Jacob
IT security and data protection company Sophos announced the availability of Sophos Virtual Web Appliances providing complete web protection, a streamlined management experience, and broad deployment flexibility in virtual environments. Available for download via the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace, the new Virtual Web Appliances can be set up in minutes, bringing the company’s award-winning hardware security capabilities to businesses of any size with ease.
Virtualisation has helped organisations reduce capital and operating costs, and drive greater levels of application availability; it has also yielded benefits in flexibility, agility, and control. However, even as virtualisation has helped reduce the number of physical servers, the number of virtual servers continues to rise, resulting in increased complexity and server personnel management costs.
Making virtualisation easier
With this new release, Sophos reduces the complexity of a virtual environment by integrating their unique managed appliance experience to deliver an industry-first on-premise managed service. Sophos Managed Appliances include remote monitoring and automated maintenance at no additional charge; this approach combines all of the benefits of virtualisation and on-premise control with the cost savings of a managed service, reducing overhead and complexity. The Sophos Virtual Web Appliance also automates the update and upgrade process, and provides proactive monitoring and support—further simplifying network management.
Streamlined provisioning and management
The Sophos Virtual Appliances streamline the provisioning and management processes with pre-configured performance profiles, built-in load balancing and an intuitive management console. Users can manage several virtual appliances within a single console, increasing performance and capacity while reducing management time and complexity.
Complete Web Protection Everywhere
By integrating Web Appliance protection with the Sophos Endpoint security solution, the company delivers unmatched protection and management visibility into users’ web activity—wherever they go. Administrators can quickly and easily set policies, report on activity and protect users, even beyond the secure perimeter of the corporate network. This is all possible without the need for costly and complex backhauling or added gateway infrastructure.
Sophos provides industry-leading web protection thanks to a unique three-stage filter, which combines URL reputation filtering, advanced real-time malware scanning with behavioral analysis, and content control to guard against the latest threats. Sophos appliances also include advanced capabilities such as HTTPS scanning, dynamic anonymising proxy blocking, and call home detection to cover essential blind-spots.
Trials are available free of charge and licensing is simple, based on a per user, per year basis with no additional charges for the number of virtual servers.