Sophos heads to cloud for new security tech

Sophos has launched three new protection technologies in its Endpoint Security and Data Protection 9.5 services.

From the end of the month, customers will get to enjoy Sophos Live Anti-Virus, which stops unknown threats by checking suspicious files against a cloud-based database of known files both good and bad.

Sophos Live URL Filtering stops users accessing websites that have been identified as hosting malware, based on a SophosLabs database of more than 11 million malicious URLs.

The final product in the new lineup is the Sophos Runtime Behavior Detection addition, which tracks how a file works by looking at what it does before execution and after. The data security company can then scan its database of file profiles to look for a malware match, instantly informing the user if one is found.

Sophos product specialist Jon Tait explained to IT PRO that the new additions get rid of the additional "noise" created by numerous vendor alerts to customers, who are often left to choose how to deal with suspicious files.

"It's reducing the noise for the user and reducing the impact on the IT department because they are getting less alerts. We're finding in the tests that this not only reduces the noise but it also increases the detection of new variants of malware," Tait said.

He noted that there is great benefit to be derived by providing protection using the cloud.

"I think that a combination of doing it within the organisation and also having some cloud security expertise or knowledge, the ability to check with vendors on what the latest threats are in the cloud, is a good balance to have," Tait said.

"Certainly the customers we've seen they want to manage it all internally, they want to do a lot of the protection themselves, but there is that ability to have someone watching their back and using the cloud to do that," he added.

Panda Security launched a new protection product earlier this month, also using a cloud database to identify malicious files.