Gartner on Sophos December 2007
Sophos is first vendor to break into the Gartner Endpoint Security (anti-virus) Leaders Quadrant in the last 5 years. Here is a brief summary of the report:
Strengths per Gartner:
- A good balance of malware, PFW and HIPS defenses that are deterministic and easy to deploy and manage
- Significantly improved and simple management, that gives a real time view from which actions can be immediately taken (e.g. force an update on all those computers)
- Excellent integrated network access control (NAC) capability with the ability to monitor, assess and remediate competitive EPP clients
- Recognized for outstanding technology, support and service.
- The company has a strong financial position, which new management is leveraging to become more agile and aggressive in adding new features and products.
Sophos has a better understanding of business needs, particularly the need to provide return on investment for the buyer and to balance advanced features with low administration.
[Sophos’] effective anti-spam is a derivative of multiple techniques, including reputation filtering, URL filtering to block bad destinations, and Genotype filtering to block active campaigns and their variants.
[Sophos] is well-known for providing excellent client services, abetted by a focus on creating easy-to-use products.
[IronPort’s integration of OEM technology] generally involve more administration overhead and expense than integrated solutions from the competition.
Sophos has combined virus, spyware and spam analysis in the same lab to better understand converged threats. The company is also growing its gateway malicious-code protection business.
