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| Sophos K-12 Customers Stay Ahead of the Security Curve | |
| Posted: Tue Jun 29, 2010 09:55:00 AM | |
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Proactively protecting students, staff, and faculty against the latest threats BOSTON – June 28, 2010 – IT security and data protection firm Sophos today announced that it continues to proactively protect K-12 school districts from the latest security threats. Some of nation's largest and most reputable school districts such as Miami-Dade County Public Schools and St. Louis Public Schools entrust Sophos with safeguarding their networks against today's sophisticated and fast-moving threats. Notably, Sophos's ever-expanding K-12 customer list now includes Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, Spokane Public Schools in Washington, and the Recovery School District in Louisiana. Schools today face myriad challenges - multiple threat vectors, rising threat levels, targeted and sophisticated attacks, compliance and regulation mandates, tighter budgets, a plethora of complex security vendor solutions to choose from constrained IT resources, and computer savvy students that may or may not intentionally seek ways to circumvent school security policies set by the school. Sophos has long offered advanced security protection while reducing the security-related challenges for IT administrators. The company continues to help K-12 IT administrators conquer these obstacles by empowering them with complete IT security and data protection solutions that are easy to deploy, manage and maintain. Sophos Adds "Live" Protection Technologies to Block Malware Outbreaks in Real-Time Staying ahead of the escalating threat landscape requires proactive detection technologies like Host Intrusion Prevention System (HIPS) and cloud-based malware lookups. Earlier this month, Sophos introduced Sophos Live Protection, an advancement pioneered by SophosLabs, that is now integrated into Sophos Endpoint Security and Data Protection. This new cloud-based architecture arms customers with the most extensive combination of real-time threat protection against malware, malicious URLs, and spam, and real-time feedback to security and application policy settings. Sophos Live Protection simplifies the rollout of proactive protection for students, staff, and faculty inside and outside the school's network – allowing them to get the protection they need against today's rapidly moving threats such as hijacked websites and targeted malware attacks – without adding additional IT security management overhead. What does this mean for customers? SophosLabs does the heavy lifting for IT administrators by fine-tuning HIPS, maintaining application and device control lists, and delivering real-time threat protection. Growth by Listening to Customer Needs – Delivering More Value-Added Security This past fiscal year, Sophos saw tremendous demand from the U.S. K-12 market. The company experienced a 40 percent year-over-year growth in this sector and achieved more than an 80 percent retention rate. To date, Sophos has approximately 25 percent of the nation's K-12 market share. "Today's K-12 IT administrators are overwhelmed. Challenged with limited staff and budget, students who find clever ways to bypass web browsing policies and exacting compliance and regulation mandates that are closely scrutinized, they need to implement security as efficiently and effectively as possible," said David Peck, Public Sector Manager at Sophos. "To arm our customers in that process, we've added more features and functionality, including the most advanced intelligence from SophosLabs, so that they realize more value and protection for their anti-virus budget. Sophos's steady growth and high retention rate indicates that customers trust and value our products and services, and that is definitely something that we are fully committed to maintaining." "We selected Sophos Endpoint Security and Data Protection for several reasons. Sophos's centralized management console gives my team better visibility and control over our network, security updates are incredibly timely and go virtually unnoticed by end users, additional features like application control and DLP are included without additional costs and administration effort, and the sales and technical support teams are extremely knowledgeable, reliable, and professional," said Roderick D. Matthews, IT Director at the Recovery School District Operations Department. "Sophos continues to strengthen its security offerings without tacking on additional steps for administrators – a major benefit to the IT team as they can dedicate more time and resources to other critical areas." Sophos Continues to Deliver Complete Transparent, Easy-to-Manage Perimeter Defense For 25 years, Sophos has been in the business of analyzing and protecting against viruses and other security threats. Today, Sophos's portfolio of Security and Data Protection solutions spans all points of the network, proactively thwarting security threats with minimal time and effort. * Sophos Endpoint Security and Data Protection integrates more than just anti-virus, anti-malware, anti-spyware, and firewall technologies. Sophos has integrated HIPS, application and device control, data leakage prevention, encryption, and network access control (NAC) – adding more value for the cost of most organizations' anti-virus budget. In fact, the company includes all security updates and intelligence from SophosLabs, product upgrades, support, as well as a Sophos Competitor Removal Tool. Sophos provides additional lines of defense to schools by offering email and web gateways, which provides the same effectiveness and simplicity as the endpoint. * Sophos Web Security and Control blocks spyware, viruses, phishing, malware, anonymizing proxies and unwanted applications at the gateway and enables comprehensive web access control for safe, productive web browsing. Unlike traditional solutions, Sophos web appliances eliminate the time-consuming task of searching for, and blocking, anonymizing proxies by using reputation-based service and a real-time proxy detection. * Sophos Email Security and Data Protection enables complete security and data protection across the entire email infrastructure – from the gateway to the workgroup server – eliminating known and unknown threats including spam, phishing and malware, and preventing information leakage and compliance violations. It enables safe, productive internal and external email communication with minimal administrative and end-user effort. |