IT security vendor Sophos has made several updates to its Unified Threat Management solution, Sophos UTM.
With more than 100 new features, Sophos says the highlight of the new UTM platform is bringing Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) to the small and mid market.
The company says the new UTM brings together multiple technologies to “rapidly identify and isolate infected clients” and prevent communication with malicious command and control hosts. The UTM also introduces cloud-based sandboxing to expand on existing multi-layer Firewall, Web, Email and Endpoint protection.
“The initial stages of targeted attacks can often go unnoticed by security systems that don’t control incoming and outgoing traffic. For organizations with limited IT resources, investing time and money in a dedicated ATP solution to detect these early signs is simply not realistic, given how tricky, complex and fast moving this type of traffic is,” says Chris Kraft, vice president, product management, Sophos.
The new release (UTM 9.2) also significantly boosts the speed of security scanning with initial data showing the new performance optimized IPS doubling throughput speed in test environments.
The Email, Web, and Network Protection modules all benefit from significant enhancements, including:
• Simplified Email Encryption and DLP – Sophos SPX technology eliminates need for a separate Public Key Infrastructure and policy-based DLP can trigger automatic encryption
• Smarter Web Control – streamlined policy setup enables granular user control and transparent web filtering of https traffic provides seamless protection
• Mobile Access Control – enhances WiFi and VPN security by combining Sophos UTM with Mobile Device Management functionality in Sophos Mobile Control
• Performance Optimized IPS – intelligent processes and pattern management deliver enhanced scanning speeds to rapidly block network attacks and prevent breaches
• Botnet/Command and Control Protection – Sophos Advanced Threat Protection identifies and blocks infected machines communicating with malware command and control servers
“The UTM market is one of the most competitive in security. Numerous features and applications have been added over the past few years, and we’re increasingly seeing solutions are providing more effective security and better performance,” said John Grady, Research Manager, Security Products and Services IDC. “This latest release from Sophos continues to simplify complex technologies. SPX email encryption is an example of that and is a differentiated approach among other UTM vendors.”
