Sophos extends protection to the cloud

Security vendor Sophos has added cloud-based real-time threat prevention technology to its Endpoint Security and Data Protection offerings with the aim of improving protection against targeted malware attacks, fake anti-virus offers and zero-day exploits.

Sophos Live Protection includes a Live Anti-Virus feature that checks suspicious files against a cloud-based reputation database, while Live URL Filtering prevents real-time access to known malicious URLs.

Sophos Runtime Behaviour Detection, meanwhile, tracks and profiles files, allowing the firm to match any known malware with those in its databases.

"IT teams pay security companies to protect them from bad stuff, but many vendors leave customers to decide what to do with suspicious files,” explained Sophos product specialist Jon Tait.

“This Sophos release reduces all this noise by addressing this problem head-on: suspicious files trigger an instantaneous look-up to the Sophos online database of good and bad data, and the file is allowed or blocked faster than a blink of an eye.”

Cloud-based technologies such as Trend Micro’s Smart Protection Network platform are being used increasingly by security vendors who recognise that the old anti-virus signature update paradigm is incapable of coping with today’s threats.

Using the cloud enables vendors to offer products that intercept threats before they hit the corporate network and to block access to malicious sites.