Sophos software in a box

The recent announcement from Sophos that it is at last putting together an appliance-based protection offering to support delivery of its security services probably came as a shock to the traditionalists who see Sophos as a pure-play antivirus solutions provider. But, like it or not, Sophos' award-winning ES4000 email security product is now available in a can, as a plug-and-play appliance.

By CBR Staff Writer

The solution features an intuitive web-based interface and the service element supports the automated update of virus and associated protection signatures. In operational use, the new ES4000 appliance provides email protection against the ever-growing threat from viruses, Trojans, spyware, spam, and from the policy-measured abuses that can be identified in both inbound and outbound traffic flows.

With its automated real-time virus and spam protection facilities being delivered every five minutes, the ES4000 is being positioned by Sophos as having the capacity and scalability to process literally millions of email messages each day.

The solution contains what the company calls 24-hour ‘heartbeat’ remote monitoring facilities that incorporate the use of built-in diagnostics, and its on-demand remote assistance facilities provide additional support for email security managers. The solution includes web-based dashboard displays that provide at-a-glance management views of system performance in order to minimize support time and to allow administrators to oversee performance levels, view analysis reports and summaries, and take control of communications policy issues.

For a long time Sophos technology has been used to power some of the most successful appliances on the market; in fact around 30% of companies running email appliances are already benefiting from having Sophos OEM’d as part of their protection offerings. In this respect Sophos is somewhat uniquely positioned to deliver its services using an integrated approach that is provided and delivered from singly-sourced, home-grown Sophos technology.

The questions that this new approach brings, of course, are many. For example, could Sophos not have committed to delivering an appliance-based offering at least two years ago? Why is now the right time when most of the competition already have a good head-start? The competition would argue that Sophos is already too late into a market that is overcrowded with strong protection solutions. The Sophos response is that the market needed to mature and that its solution takes in and uses all best practice email protection and service delivery protocols.

Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)