Sophos Cloud - More Than Just an Antivirus
Update: Sophos renamed the product “Sophos Cloud” to “Sophos Central” in August 2016. Various links in this article have been updated and now point to the current Central products.
Sophos products are genuinely impressive. One of our latest favourites is Sophos Cloud. WAIT… don’t click away yet! My first reaction was also: “Cloud?” swiftly followed by: “Cloud storage from Sophos with encryption?” No need to worry - it’s not cloud storage. As mentioned, we really do think Sophos products are excellent, but the product names are a nightmare. How are we supposed to sell a product to customers today that has the word “Cloud” in its name?
In this blog post I’d like to take a closer look at Sophos Cloud as a product, explain how much “cloud” is really behind it, and what benefits it can bring to an organisation.
Sophos Security Services
The title is something we came up with because it precisely describes what Sophos Cloud Central actually is.
Sophos Cloud is currently an antivirus solution whose management resides in the cloud. Sophos offers several types of antivirus solution:
- Antivirus standalone - simply installed on the PC or Mac
- Antivirus on‑premise - the management console is installed on a Windows Server in the organisation
- Antivirus on the UTM - managed via the web interface of the Sophos UTM
- Antivirus in the cloud - managed via a browser in the cloud
The odd thing is that each of these variants has different functions and features. If you have questions about the exact differences, just get in touch with us. For our customers we have mainly deployed antivirus on the UTM in the past, Sophos UTM Endpoint Protection. As the feature set has, subjectively, not really been extended since around 2013 and the roadmap has been trimmed back, we will be focusing more heavily on Sophos Cloud in future.
If you’d like to find out more about the different variants and options for endpoint protection from Sophos, we recommend reading this datasheet.
Sophos Cloud
Now to the main topic of this blog post, Sophos Cloud. In short, it is a security solution for endpoints (PC, Mac, Windows Server, Linux server, iOS, Android and soon Windows Phone) with a management console in the cloud.
Performance
Nobody wants their computer to grind to a halt just because they have installed an antivirus scanner. From my own experience I can clearly say that Sophos performs very well compared with other major vendors. The following graphic underlines this point. Whether on a server or a client, the system doesn’t feel sluggish at all.
Licensing
Before we get to security, which should actually come first, I’d like to briefly touch on cost. The interesting point is that Sophos Cloud is not licensed per client, but per user. So if an employee has, for example, a Windows workstation, a Mac, a notebook and two to three smartphones, the price remains the same. Admittedly, this example is a bit exaggerated and probably doesn’t reflect the average employee. ;-) Servers are licensed per system, regardless of whether it’s a physical or virtual server. One licence per OS applies. If this explanation is too brief, you can also read the corresponding article in our knowledge base: How is Sophos Central licensed?
Security
In terms of malware detection rates, Sophos consistently earns top marks in current tests. It’s also worth mentioning that Sophos has been firmly positioned in the upper right quadrant of the vendor landscape over time. This shows that the product is not only secure in the short term, but is also under active development.
Updates
For us it’s absolutely crucial that software receives updates on a regular basis. Before I buy an app for my smartphone, for example, I always check when it was last updated. Anything older than a year is dead to me. At six months I’m already a bit sceptical. That’s the tech nerd in me speaking. 🙂 Sophos fully satisfies this requirement. Sophos Cloud receives minor updates every 30 days and major updates every 90 days, which also affect the management interface. Virus definitions are, of course, updated several times a day. Updates are fully automated, similar to other services such as Office 365 or AWS.
More than just an antivirus
Sophos Cloud is more than just antivirus. For us internally it’s a complete Sophos Security Service. The product is continuously developed and new features are added. The latest enhancement was the web gateway. Data encryption is also planned, among other things.
Try Sophos Central (formerly Sophos Cloud)
If you now feel like giving Sophos Central a try, we offer a free 30‑day trial. Simply fill in the form at the following URL and enjoy the full feature set of Sophos Central for 30 days!
