Sophos aims to continue working closely with partners to make them believe in their vision

Headquartered in Oxford, U.K, Sophos protects more than 400,000 organizations in more than 150 countries from cyber threats. Sophos has been driving the transition to next-generation cybersecurity by leveraging advanced capabilities in cloud, machine learning, APIs, automation, managed threat response, and more, to deliver enterprise-grade protection to any size organization. In a chat with VARINDIA, Sunil Sharma, Managing Director Sales, Sophos India & SAARC has shared his views on safeguarding customers, its latest products and technologies, future roadmap etc. 

Empowering Customers

As a growing number of organizations are adopting work from home (WFH) as a permanent company policy or even the adoption of hybrid working solutions, this shift has certainly caused some critical challenges for businesses in terms of cybersecurity. Irrespective of the size of the organization, ensuring cybersecurity is a crucial consideration for all businesses. Some of the protective measures Sophos recommend are: 

• Ensure devices and systems are fully protected: Go back to basics – ensure all devices, operating systems, software applications and security solutions are up to date with the latest patches and versions. All too often malware breaches an organization’s defenses via an unpatched or unprotected device.

• Create a secure connection back to the office: Using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) ensures that all the data transferred between the home user and the office network is encrypted and protected in transit. 

• Scan and secure email and establish healthy practice: Home- working has led to a big increase in email as people can no longer speak to colleagues in person. The crooks are wise to this and already using phishing emails to entice users to click on malicious links. Ensure email protection is up-to-date and raise awareness of phishing.

• Enable web filtering: Applying web filtering rules on devices will ensure that users can only access content appropriate for ‘work’ while protecting them from malicious websites.

• Make sure people have a way to report security issues: With home working people can’t walk over to the IT team if they have an issue. Give people a quick and easy way to report security issues.

Defense for customers and employees 

According to Sunil, “Cybersecurity awareness for our customers and partners is one of the key focus areas for Sophos. We have a dedicated tool-Sophos Phish Threat that provides phishing attack simulation and training for end-users. It helps our customers to nurture a culture of positive security awareness. Effective security training is also a part of Sophos Phish Threat, available through Sophos Central, which is a cloud-based management platform.”

Products and solutions to mitigate the situation

Powered by deep learning neural network Sophos Intercept X uses behavioral analysis to stop previously unseen ransomware and boot record attacks. Intercept X secures endpoints and servers using CryptoGuard technology, which stops both local and remote unauthorized file encryption by malicious software. Then it restores data to its original state, taking ransomware’s power over its victims away. 

Sophos Intercept X combines ransomware protection, deep learning malware detection, exploit prevention, End Point Detection and Response (EDR) - all in a single solution. 

“Sophos’ synchronized security strategy enables multiple security products to work together seamlessly with simpler management and better security. It allows Sophos endpoint (Intercept X) and firewall (XG firewall) to share threat intelligence, and provide faster comprehensive protection against advanced threats like ransomware.” confirms Sunil.

The latest security technologies

The pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation and cloud adoption among businesses across industry sectors. Businesses have understood the importance of cloud in enabling working and doing business from anywhere. While cloud enables digital transformation, cybersecurity makes digital transformation more secure. Organizations should understand that security of cloud infrastructure is a shared responsibility where the cloud provider takes care of the security on the cloud. 

On this topic Sunil comments, “However, the safety of what organizations put on the cloud is the responsibility of them and not the cloud provider. We’re here to help Indian organizations understand these changing attacker behaviors, so that they can implement the best anti-ransomware technology, like Sophos Intercept X with EDR, and threat hunting services such as our MTR and Rapid Response, to defend against ransomware, both now and in the future.”

To Conclude

In 2021, Sophos aims to continue working closely with their partners to make them believe in their vision. This involves protecting people and enterprises from cybercrime, by developing powerful and intuitive products and services and grow them by protecting their joint customers across every vertical and size.

“Our strategy for the future is very clear – to advance our next-generation solutions that leverage synchronized security. We have a clear vision of how we are going to enable digital transformation. We also know from our threat intelligence that ransomware will continue to be an attack strategy for adversaries across all rungs of the cybercriminal hierarchy. We will continue to focus on our Sophos Global Partner Program, which helps our partners have a clear growth path with Sophos. This helps support partners as they upsell and cross-sell across Sophos’ next-generation product portfolio. We also plan to continue the momentum we have seen for Sophos MSP Connect in the region. Partners who are committed to Sophos will see a clear growth path with us,” concludes Sunil.