News
CyberArk announced it was named a Leader in “The Forrester Wave: Privileged Identity Management, Q4 2018.”1 Based on Forrester’s evaluation of the 11 most significant privileged identity management vendors, CyberArk ranks highest in both the current offering and market presence categories.
According to the report, “The [CyberArk] solution has strong password safe, session management, and privileged threat analytics, as well as the broadest DevOps support of any vendor evaluated in this Forrester Wave.” CyberArk received the highest possible score in report criteria including customer satisfaction; privileged threat/behavior analytics; privilege delegation and escalation; privileged session monitoring plans; and container support plans.
The CyberArk Privileged Access Security Solution is the most comprehensive solution on the market for protecting against the exploitation of privileged accounts, credentials and secrets anywhere – including on the endpoint and across on-premises, hybrid cloud and DevOps environments.
“This Forrester Wave report reinforces, in our opinion, the importance of privileged identity management for controlling both human user and machine access to an organization’s most sensitive assets and information,” said Marianne Budnik, CMO, CyberArk. “We are proud to be named a Leader by Forrester, and appreciate the support of our customers and partners who look to CyberArk as a trusted advisor and partner in their efforts to invest in modern infrastructure, improve business agility and drive new opportunities for growth.”
To download a complimentary copy of The Forrester Wave: Privileged Identity Management, Q4 2018 report, visit https://www.cyberark.com/resource/forrester-wave-privileged-identity-management/
The product behind the most successful Early Access Program (EAP) in Sophos history, Intercept X Advanced with EDR, is now generally available to all.
In September we first made our new endpoint detection and response (EDR) capabilities available and the response has been overwhelming. In just two months we have had close to 1,000 customers and 28,000 endpoints use Intercept X Advanced with EDR, and the feedback has been incredible.
What are EAP participants saying about Intercept X Advanced with EDR?
- It makes our team more efficient
- The ability to isolate a machine while we investigate is really helpful
- Everything we have asked it has done … and it did things we didn’t think about
- It makes it easy to understand at lightning speed what is happening, so we can quickly remediate
We asked EAP participants how they are using Intercept X with EDR and their top use cases include:
- Report on the state of their security and compliance posture
- Detect attacks that may have gone unnoticed
- Search for indicators of compromise across all their endpoints
- Determine the scope and impact of an incident
- Investigate attacks that are tagged as suspicious (but may not be malicious)
- Conduct previously unattainable malware analysis
- Quickly remediate incidents by cleaning and blocking the file across all their machines
Sophos Intercept X Advanced with EDR integrates intelligent endpoint detection and response with the industry’s top-rated malware detection, top-rated exploit protection, and other unmatched endpoint protection features. It replicates the tasks normally performed by skilled analysts, so organizations can add expertise without having to add staff.
Unlike other EDR solutions which rely on highly skilled human analysts to ask questions and interpret data, Intercept X Advanced with EDR is powered by machine learning and enhanced with curated SophosLabs threat intelligence. When an investigation is concluded, analysts can respond with a click of a button.
Learn more or try it for free today.
You know the old saying, “The rich get richer”? Well, our UTM 9 platform is feature rich, but every year we pack more and more features into it. This year is no exception with our UTM 9.6 release.
Here’s what’s included in UTM 9.6
Let’s Encrypt integration
- Generate and renew Let’s Encrypt certificates from within the UTM
- Generated certificates can be used in all UTM components
Web Application Firewall (WAF) page customization
- Custom themes for all error pages that are delivered via the WAF
- Enables the use of a custom corporate identity on all pages
Manual Sandstorm submission
- Allows an admin to upload a file for detonation within Sophos Sandstorm
- Files that have not been received via email or web download can also be analyzed with Sophos Sandstorm
Persistent Sandstorm reports
- Enhanced reporting for Sandstorm activity over time and with historic information
- Reporting also covers hash lookup based results from Sophos Sandstorm
Other enhancements
- Unified RED firmware with improved 3G/4G support
- Submission port support in SMTP proxy
- Configurable listen address in SMTP proxy
- New advanced thread protection library with better performance and protection
The full release notes can be found on the Sophos Community.
How to get it
The release will be rolled out automatically in phases over the coming weeks. For anyone that wants the latest and greatest now, you can download the latest firmware yourself.
If you have any questions, check out the Sophos UTM 9 Community Forums.
We’re excited to announce that we’ve been awarded Security Vendor of the Year at the CRN UK Channel Awards 2018!
The CRN Channel Awards celebrated its 25th anniversary by recognising exceptional achievements in the UK channel industry over the past 12 months.
In CRN’s words: Security Vendor of the YearThe award recognises the overall contribution that [Sophos] is making to business development in the channel, in terms of its product range and development, channel and marketing programmes, and service and support.
Sophos focuses 100 percent of its resources on building products and programs with the needs of channel partners in mind. If you’re interested in working with us, take a look at the Sophos Partner Program and learn how, together, we can take your business to the next level.
You can read the original article, here.
For a second consecutive year, Sophos has been named a CRN Tech Innovator for Intercept X with deep learning.
The Channel Company’s annual CRN Tech Innovator Awards honor standout hardware, software, and services that are moving the IT industry forward.
The editors at CRN evaluated 300 products across 34 technology categories using criteria including technological advancements, uniqueness of features, and potential to help solution providers solve end users’ IT challenges. Sophos Intercept X with deep learning took top honors in the Security – Endpoint category.
Unlike other endpoint solutions, Sophos Intercept X with deep learning stops never-before-seen malware, unknown exploit variants, stealth attacks, and ransomware. Intercept X learns the observable threat landscape, processes hundreds of millions of samples, and makes more accurate predictions at a faster rate than traditional machine learning solutions.
When used together with other Sophos protection such as XG Firewall or Intercept X for Server, Intercept X shares threat intelligence, enabling automated responses to threats that don’t require manual intervention. Through Sophos Central, administrators can remotely install Intercept X to run alongside existing endpoint security software from any vendor, immediately boosting their endpoint protection.
In addition to CRN, SE Labs and other independent third-party testers and analysts consistently rank Sophos Intercept X as the industry’s top endpoint protection product. But you don’t need to take their word for it. We’re always happy to show you how Intercept X performs against real-world endpoint attacks, including never-before-seen malware, ransomware, and exploits.
To learn more about Intercept X, download the Intercept X Advanced with EDR datasheet or sign up for a demo.
You can read the original article, here.
The team is hard at work putting the finishing touches on our next major release of XG Firewall, and it is a huge release! XG Firewall v17.5 brings some amazing new Synchronized Security features as well as many of your most-requested features.
The best part is you can start taking advantage of many of these new capabilities today, as part of the Early Access Program.
What’s new in XG Firewall v17.5
Here’s a quick overview of the key new features in v17.5:
- Synchronized Security – lateral movement protection – extends our Security Heartbeat™ automated threat isolation to prevent any threat from moving laterally or spreading across the network, even on the same subnet. The firewall instructs all healthy endpoints to completely isolate any unhealthy endpoints.
- Synchronized User ID – utilizes Security Heartbeat™ to greatly streamline authentication for user-based policy enforcement and reporting in any Active Domain network by eliminating the need for any kind of server or client agent.
- Education features – such as per-user policy-based control over SafeSearch and YouTube restrictions, teacher enabled block-page overrides, and Chromebook authentication support.
- Email features – adds Sender Policy Framework (SPF) anti-spoofing protection and a new MTA based on Exim, which closes a couple of top requested feature differences with SG Firewall.
- IPS protection – is enhanced with greatly expanded categories enabling you to better optimize your performance and protection.
- Management enhancements – including enhanced firewall rule grouping with automatic group assignment, and a custom column selection for the log viewer.
- VPN and SD-WAN failover and failback – including new IPSec failover and failback controls and SD-WAN link failback options.
- Client authentication – gets a major update with a variety of new enhancements such as per-machine deployment, a logout option, support for wake from sleep, and MAC address sharing.
- Sophos Connect – is our new IPSec VPN Client, free for all XG Firewall customers, that makes remote VPN connections easy for users, and supports Synchronized Security.
In addition, coming in a following maintenance release we have:
- Wireless APX access point support – provides support for the new Wave 2 access points providing faster connectivity and added scalability.
- Airgap support – for deployments where XG Firewall can’t get updates automatically via an internet connection (due to an “airgap” or physical isolation) – XG Firewall can now be updated via USB.
Sophos Central management of XG Firewall
With v17.5, XG Firewall is also joining Sophos Central. The Early Access Program for Sophos Central Management of XG Firewall is expected to start soon.
You will be able to manage XG Firewall from within Sophos Central along with all your other Sophos Central products. And there’s a few great new features coming along with Sophos Central Management of XG Firewall:
- Secure access and management with single-sign-on through Sophos Central from anywhere.
- Backup management and storage for your regularly scheduled firewall backups.
- Firmware update management to make multiple firewall updates easy.
- Light-touch deployment to enable easy remote setup of a new firewall.
Get early access now!
Head on over to the XG Firewall Community Forums to get the v17.5 EAP firmware update, additional information on what’s new, and to share your feedback with the Sophos Product Team and the rest of the community.
You can read the original article, here.
Who’s responsible for cybersecurity at work? Is it the security team, the employees or a mix of both?
And, perhaps most importantly of all, does everyone in your organization agree?
A recent study commissioned by Sophos revealed that six out of ten employees feel more relaxed about IT security at work than at home, with 45% of people admitting that they don’t feel responsible for IT security at work.
Company security policies are designed to create a safe workplace for all employees. Those policies are often developed by a security team with years of experience, but policies only work if they’re adhered to. No matter how good your security team is, it’s relying on everyone else to make it their responsibility to maintain a safe workplace by following its policies. Helping employees to learn and understand those policies is vitally important.
The workplace isn’t a homogeneous whole though, it’s a collection of individuals with different personalities and learning styles. If everyone receives the same training content, don’t be surprised if the message doesn’t sink in everywhere.
New award-winning security training
Sophos Phish Threat is here to make security awareness training stick.
Phish Threat covers a wide range of topics from general or role-based security awareness to regulatory compliance, in a variety of engaging formats. It makes use of videos, interactive modules and gamification in a mix of visual styles to ensure that everyone gets the message.
Today, we’re excited to announce that our range of training has grown. Thanks to our latest Phish Threat learning partnership with Ninjio, we’ve added over 30 new training modules, plus we’re growing Phish Threat by one new module every month!
Ninjio shares our approach of short, engaging training, and its unique style recently scooped it the Gartner Customer Choice award for Computer Based Training 2018. By dramatizing real-life cyber threat headlines, with Hollywood script writers and great animations, Ninjio brings stories to life.
The freshest content
With all that training at your fingertips, your employees should be cybersecurity ninjas in no time. But to truly test their new-found skills, Phish Threat also provides more than 500 customizable attack email templates in nine languages. And new templates are being added every week, so to help we’ve made it easier to find the latest content fast.
Featured templates
The latest phishing attacks and seasonal campaigns train users to identify real-world attacks hitting their inboxes today, as well as the seasonal campaigns they need to know about.
New templates
New templates are automatically applied to every Phish Threat account. The New flag allows you to quickly find the most recently added templates, to help keep things interesting for your employees.
Five stars from customers
Our latest independent customer reviews show how easy it is to get started, and the almost immediate impact that Phish Threat is having on reducing risk.
“The cloud offering was extremely easy to deploy. The training exercises and videos were extremely relevant, engaging and just the right length”.
You can start educating your employees today with our free anti-phishing toolkit.
Sophos has already been recognized by Gartner as a leader in seven consecutive Magic Quadrants for Mobile Data protection (2009-2015). And now we’re proud to announce that we’ve been named one of the vendors with the most comprehensive solutions in Gartner’s 2018 Market Guide for Information-Centric Endpoint and Mobile Protection for the third year in a row.
This guide replaces the now-retired Gartner Magic Quadrant for Mobile Data Protection. We believe the new guide is intended to help better secure information at rest in a world that has become infinitely mobile – a powerful challenge for today’s cybersecurity professionals.
Gartner details eight protection methods to meet these challenges. According to Gartner, “companies are suffering from gaps in their information-centric protection, and vendors are beginning to fill those gaps, in order to stay competitive, by adopting more of the eight protection methods described.”
Sophos provides a solution in all eight methods of information-centric endpoint protection, with powerful orchestration across multiple layers of security with Synchronized Security.
You can read more about these eight methods in the latest market guide.
The testing of cybersecurity products is a contentious subject, with vendors and test organizations striving to deliver an objective evaluation despite very different ideas of what that looks like. The threat landscape is constantly evolving, and this makes evaluating a single product’s effectiveness at a single point in time problematic. Yet however imperfect and difficult it might be, Sophos is committed to improving every customer’s ability to make informed decisions about security solutions.
For a long time, we have encouraged organizations to seek independent validation of vendor-claimed product effectiveness, ideally from multiple sources. That’s why you’ll find detection performance, analyst reviews, and test results from independent vendors such as NSS Labs, SE Labs, MRG Effitas, and AV-Test on our website and in our marketing materials. Sophos proactively engages in public and commissioned tests and uses the results to improve product effectiveness.
Testing security products isn’t easy. There are few objective resources that can help to establish the connections between how attacks are performed in the real world and the capabilities of security products to prevent or detect them. Designing and executing a statistically relevant and objectively valuable test is extraordinarily difficult. There are many tools, frameworks, and sample sources available, but they require intensive curation, orchestration, and auditing to be used effectively in measurement. These challenges often lead to tests that measure security effectiveness across only a single threat vector, such as static file detections in isolation without consideration for methods of delivery. As a result, published independent tests are not holistic and disproportionately focus on a single dimension, such as file-based portable execution detection.
In 2008, Sophos became a founding member of AMTSO, as we believe that the way to improve testing experiences is to get all stakeholders — vendors, independent test organizations, customers, and analysts — to adopt working practices and test standards that better serve all our customers. In addition to our work with AMTSO, we are committing to uphold certain best practice principles whenever we engage in product testing.
Testing of security products should be fair, rigorous, transparent, and collaborative. Read the Sophos Third-Party Testing Principles here: www.sophos.com/bestpracticetesting
We understand the value of independent evaluations, yet sometimes tests do not provide a clear methodology or enable vendors to comment on results before they are published, which is disadvantageous for customers. With a commitment to transparency and a focus on the customer need, we can find the right path forward.
Sophos believes that customers and the industry will benefit if all security vendors and testing organizations:
- Embrace and contribute to the ongoing review and improvement of such projects as the AMTSO Testing Protocol Standard and MITRE’s ATT&CK Framework;
- Remove arbitrary or excessive restrictions on the use of security products for the purposes of comparative testing and publication of factual results;
- Actively participate in high quality independent tests, especially those that are aligned with the Sophos principles and AMTSO standards;
- Advocate for fair, rigorous, transparent, and collaborative testing that provides the answers prospective customers need to make better informed decisions about security products.
We are proud of the quality and effectiveness of our products – and you can put them to the test. We’ll be sharing more about how we intend to further improve everyone’s ability to test our security products shortly, so watch this space!
You can read the original article, here.
Netwrix conducted a study of the major IT risks that are significant for most organizations and assessed respondents’ readiness to withstand cyber threats.
The report is based on the feedback of 1,558 organizations of various sizes from many different regions and industries. It summarizes the experiences and plans the organizations have in regard to addressing six IT risks: physical damage, intellectual property theft, data loss, data breach, system disruption and compliance penalties.
The report reveals the following key findings:
- Most companies consider hacker attacks to be the most dangerous threat, but in fact, insiders cause the majority of security incidents by either malicious or accidental actions.
- Not all critical security controls are reviewed regularly as required by best practices. The most neglected controls include getting rid of stale and unnecessary data and conducting data classification. These controls are exercised rarely or never by 20% and 14% of organizations, respectively.
- Although 70% of companies have done IT risk assessment at least once, only 33% re-evaluate their IT risks regularly.
- 44% of respondents either do not know or are unsure of what their employees are doing with sensitive data.
- Nonetheless, over 60% of respondents think that their level of visibility is high enough, which lulls them into a false sense of security.
- Only 17% of organizations have an actionable incident response plan; 42% have only a draft or have no plan at all.
“Our report illustrates that the foremost reason why the organizations fail to address major IT risks lies in a lax approach to security basics. They are giving priority to some controls and are leaving the most important ones out of scope. Haphazard approach to security basics and poor visibility into sensitive data gives IT pros a false sense of security. However, paying more attention to all security basics can help organizations manage IT risks with more success,” said Steve Dickson, CEO of Netwrix.
You can read the original article, here.
Defence organisations encompass two very different communication environments. Military messaging takes place within live operational environments, and might involve messages passing between different operations and forces, for example, over closed systems and networks. This type of communication must follow strict security procedures and protocols, and conform to stringent standards, as must the classification of the emails and data being shared both internally and with other nations’ defence organisations.
Alongside this, staff across the organisation are sending messages and creating data as part of the day-to-day ‘business as usual’. This could be anything from emailing a supplier to order more stationery for head office, to a sales representative adding new details to a customer record. Information that falls into this category also needs to be classified, controlled and protected.
Many defence organisations are currently reviewing the messaging tools they use, as they transition from existing X.400 systems to a more modern communications infrastructure, and there’s an increasing appetite for moving to commercial, proven off-the-shelf SMTP-based solutions and adhering to the new NATO standards.
‘Integration’ may be the current buzzword in the IT world, but we believe that the best approach is to deploy two separate but complementary solutions that each address a specific environment, application and user base.
Boldon James’ SAFEmail solution, for instance, is well-suited to military and intelligence applications, and has been used by customers in the defence market for 25 years. It’s a robust and tried and tested tool, but one that’s also at the forefront of messaging technology. In addition to current international standards and protocols, the latest version has been future-proofed to comply with the new data protection and labelling standards being introduced by NATO, which we were involved in a consultation on. SAFEmail is able to support both legacy X.400 and new systems, and can be customised to meet requirements.
An enterprise solution such as Classifier can then be deployed alongside a military messaging tool such as SAFEmail®, as a common platform to be used by the entire organisation for classifying ‘everyday’ emails and data. Classifier is structured for secure environments, and complies with industry standards and protocols, but is suited to non-operational activities with a more flexible labelling functionality that can be aligned to how the organisation works, and is currently deployed in live Top Secret level systems.
Procuring both systems from the same vendor has its advantages. The organisation will be assured the same high level of performance across all communication environments, with every message sent protected to military standards. There are also benefits to dealing with a single company, including smoother deployment, consistent support and lower cost of ownership.
Most important of all is that the vendor has a long history of service in military environments, and a profound understanding of both military and enterprise infrastructures.
You can read the original article, here.
Onboarding new devices to management policy controls includes the important step of user authentication. That’s why we’re excited to be one of the launch partners for Google Cloud’s new secure LDAP feature, launched today at Google Next London.
Sophos Mobile customers now have the option to validate their users’ identities with G Suite and Google Cloud Identity.
For organisations using G Suite or Google Cloud Identity, this will dramatically simplify the enrolment process for new devices. Sophos Mobile will use Google’s new secure LDAP implementation to validate users dynamically, during enrolment.
Google will be rolling out secure LDAP to Cloud Identity and G Suite customers in the coming weeks. Sophos customers running their own Sophos Mobile management server can take advantage of it with the release of Sophos Mobile 8.6 later this month.
If you aren’t already a Sophos Mobile customer and you’re wondering how best to secure and manage your mobile fleet, check out Sophos Mobile.
You can read the original article, here.
We are very excited to announce the launch of Sophos Intercept X Advanced with EDR, a new Intercept X offering that integrates intelligent endpoint detection and response (EDR) with the industry’s top-rated malware and exploit protection.
With Intercept X Advanced with EDR, IT and security teams can now better navigate the challenges of today’s most complex threats, such as:
- Understanding the scope and impact of security incidents
- Detecting attacks that may have gone unnoticed
- Searching for indicators of compromise across the network
- Prioritizing events for further investigation
- Analyzing files to determine if they’re potentially unwanted or true threats
- Confidently reporting on the organization’s security posture at any given moment
- Answering tough compliance questions in the event of a breach
Consider the old “needle in a haystack” figure of speech: Most EDR solutions on the market today attempt to collect as much hay as possible to ensure the needles are eventually found.
It’s a complicated, tedious, and manual process. The Sophos approach is different: thanks to industry-leading deep learning technology and unequivocally strong up-front protection, we exponentially shrink the haystack to make the needles much, much easier to find.
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) tools give security teams the ability to detect, investigate, and respond to suspicious activity. The best EDR solutions start with the strongest protection, and no other solution offers stronger protection than Intercept X.
Because Intercept X technology is so effective at stopping breaches before they start, the EDR workload is significantly lighter. This means that IT organizations of all sizes can optimize key resources, enabling them to focus on the business of IT rather than chasing false positives and dealing with overwhelming volumes of alerts.
The intelligent EDR built into the new Intercept X Advanced with EDR replicates the capabilities of highly-skilled analysts, allowing organizations to add expertise without having to add headcount. The product leverages deep learning, SophosLabs threat intelligence, and more to mimic the roles of a malware analyst, security analyst, and threat intelligence analyst all in one, without having to pay human salaries for those key skillsets.
Even for larger organizations with a security operations center (SOC), Intercept X Advanced with EDR provides a valuable first tier of detection, freeing up human analysts to focus on what’s most important. Guided investigation allows security teams of all skill levels to quickly understand their security postures thanks to context-sensitive guidance, which offers suggested next steps, clear visual attack representations, and built-in expertise. When an investigation is concluded, analysts can respond with a click of a button.
To learn more, download the Intercept X Advanced with EDR datasheet.
You can read the original article, here.
Data breaches are up 75% in two years, finds a report from the Information Commissioner (ICO). The study, carried out by Kroll, took into account an array of personal data, including health, financial and employment details.
Access to this data was made possible under the Freedom of Information Act, in addition to some ICO data being publicly available.
Incorrect Recipients
Kroll found that over 2,000 reports received by the ICO within the last year could be attributed to human error, compared to just 292 that were deliberate cyber incidents.
Of the reports that were possibly caused by human error, the most common breach types were identified as emails to incorrect recipients (447), data posted or faxed to incorrect recipients (441), and loss or theft of paperwork (438).
As for purely cyber-related attacks without human involvement, the most frequent type within the last year was unauthorised access (102).
Additionally, the health sector was revealed to be the most common source of data breach reports, yielding a total of 1,214, with general business (362), which yielded the highest increase percentage over the past two years (215%), following behind.
GDPR an Important Factor
Kroll said that the increase in reports indicates a correlating increase in transparency on the part of companies as a result of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)’s introduction back in May.
“Reporting data breaches wasn’t mandatory for most organisations before the GDPR came into force,” explained Andrew Beckett, Managing Director and EMEA Leader for Kroll’s Cyber Risk Practice, “so while the data is revealing, it only gives a snapshot into the true picture of breaches suffered by organisations in the UK.
“The recent rise in the number of reports is probably due to organisations’ gearing up for the GDPR as much as an increase in incidents. Now that the regulation is in force, we would expect to see a significant surge in the number of incidents reported as the GDPR imposes a duty on all organisations to report certain types of personal data breach.
“We would also expect to see an increase in the value of penalties issued as the maximum possible fine has risen from £500,000 to €20 million or 4 per cent of annual turnover, whichever is higher. The ultimate impact is that businesses face not only a much greater financial risk around personal data, but also a heightened reputational risk.”
The Importance of Automation
Commenting on the finds from Kroll, Sarah Armstrong-Smith, Head Continuity & Resilience at Fujitsu UK & Ireland, said that companies need to support users, helping them become “the strongest link, not the weakest.”
She said: “This needs to go beyond just providing users with security and privacy training and awareness. There also needs to be mechanisms in place to identify and prevent internal data leakages from occurring.”
Ms Armstrong-Smith went on to explain the role of automation in possibly improving data security.
“Automation is helping organisations to detect and respond to changes and adapt policies to protect people and to enable them to be compliant. Not only this, but automation can help organisations react quicker and respond to a breach should it happen.
“They can do it proactively, report it in a timely and compliant way, and ensure they take control of events, rather than the other way around.
“To be truly effective when it comes to protecting personal data requires a mix of people, processes and technologies: all of which have to be carefully aligned so that everything fits together properly.
“At the end of the day, security alone cannot stop a breach, it requires a cultural shift to embed data governance throughout an organisation.”
You can read the original article, here.
We are thrilled to announced that we’ve won the award for Best Anti-Ransomware Solution and have been highly commended in the Best Security Partner Program category at the first Channelnomics Security Awards.
As Channelnomics explains, these awards have been “designed to recognize the trailblazers in the security industry – those players who are embracing the ever-changing face of the market and making it possible for the channel to forge ahead in this challenging landscape.”
The 30-category awards are completely independent and given based on innovation and achievement in the North American market over the year.
With the emergence of Intercept X, our next-gen, anti-ransomware solution, Sophos has led the way in fighting the rise of ransomware. We remain poised to meet new or evolving challenges that ransomware has in store for the industry, which is why we are proud to receive the Best Anti-Ransomware Solution accolade.
And, our customers and partners can attest to it:
“We have deployed Intercept X to more than 10,000 endpoints. Since deployment, it has stopped upwards of 2,500 endpoint ransomware attacks and we’ve had zero ransomware infections across all protected devices“.
– Emily Vandewater, Lead Security Engineer, Flexible Business Systems
As a channel first company, we are constantly working toward the continued success of our partners. Being recognized as having the Best Security Partner Program (Highly Recommended) is a powerful statement that we continue to find success building an optimal, beneficial relationship with our partners, ensuring not just financial growth but continued cybersecurity and safety for their customers.
Stop by the Channelnomics site for more on the awards ceremony and to view a full list of winners.
You can read the original article, here.
We’re very pleased to announce that for the 7th consecutive year, Gartner has named Sophos a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Unified Threat Management (SMB Multifunction Firewalls) for 2018. We continue to be one of only three vendors in the Leader’s Quadrant which we firmly believe is a testimony to the strength of our product and strategy in the eyes of customers, partners and industry analysts.
The Magic Quadrant is based on an assessment of a company’s completeness of vision and ability to execute which includes a vendor’s understanding of important industry needs and trends and its ability to address them in an effective way.
Sophos continually leads innovation in solving today’s top problems with network protection. We were the first vendor to meaningfully integrate next-gen endpoint and firewall technology together to Synchronize Security – enabling health status monitoring, instant threat identification, and automatic isolation of infected systems. With every release we continue to push the possibilities of Synchronized Security further – with our most recent releases providing breakthroughs in application visibility. Synchronized Application Control, introduced in v17, elegantly solves an enormous industry-wide problem with signature-based application identification and control. Now, with the introduction of Cloud Application Visibility in XG Firewall v17.1, we now have the most comprehensive application coverage – for both desktop and browser-based applications – available anywhere.
As the only IT security company to be positioned as a Leader across both Unified Threat Management and Endpoint Protection Platforms – we believe we are uniquely positioned to continue to lead on this next generation of Synchronized Security.
Sophos also continues to push the envelope in zero-day threat detection by bringing the latest advanced technology from our next-generation endpoint to the firewall such as exploit detection, CryptoGuard and deep learning. Whether it’s our sandboxing, IPS, SSL inspection or web protection, we’re continually investing in innovative protection technologies to ensure your network is protected from the latest threats and potentially unwanted applications.
Although we’ve been a long-running leader in network protection, we’re just getting started. We’ve got a rich roadmap of innovation ahead that will provide tremendous value and solve more of your daily challenges with your network, further distancing us from the rest of the field. It’s a great time to be a Sophos customer or partner, but it’s never too late to join in on the excitement.
Find out what Gartner has written about us in the full Magic Quadrant for Unified Threat Management report (registration required).
You can read the original article, here.
Vulnerability Assessment Builds Security Continuous Improvement Into your Enterprise SDLC
Vulnerability assessments are a highly systemised way for established organisations to gain a comprehensive picture of their security posture, and then maintain and continuously improve on it. When new devices, ports, websites, web applications, or services are added, they are included in regular scans. A vulnerability assessment is a great way to identify, and eventually fix, common vulnerabilities in your applications and servers.
Most security professionals recommend that vulnerability testing is conducted at least quarterly. Our recommendation, however, given that Netsparker allows you to configure scheduled scans, is to scan much more frequently. In any case, you should conduct vulnerability tests following any significant change or addition to your web applications or web APIs. With Netsparker, if you want to, you can run scans daily, with notifications drawing your attention to detected vulnerabilities as they arise. Resources can then be deployed rapidly to deal with critical and important threats.
Penetration Testing Exposes Fragile Cracks In Your Security Architecture
Since penetration testing is so specific, it is best suited to environments where an organisation’s web and network security is considered to be already robust. Organisations may ask a tester to attempt to do something specific, such as gain access to a transactions or bank details database, or alter or delete a single record. The purpose is to reduce exposure to certain risks. Penetration testers check for weak points in the architecture. While vulnerability assessments mostly take care of software vulnerabilities, penetration testers may often use phishing, social engineering and onsite engagements in order to reach their goal. Therefore they can give a much more accurate depiction of a company’s security level. They act exactly as malicious hackers, without producing any devastating loss or alteration of data, of course! For example, a penetration tester might try to establish a connection to a remote server without being detected, in order to exfiltrate sensible data from a system. It is a useful way to demonstrate if attackers with particular objectives in mind stand a healthy chance of success. Ostensibly, though, a pen tester would conduct an endless series of attempted hacks.
The recommendation is that penetration testing is conducted at least once per year.
What Scenarios Can Help Determine the Choice of Approach?
Both vulnerability assessments and penetration tests should be run against network devices, and internal and external servers. It’s crucial to determine whether an attack is possible from the outside (for example, by a malicious attacker targeting publicly-available target surfaces on the internet) or the inside (for example, by a disgruntled employee or contractor, a user with permissions they should not have, or a compromised machine within the internal network).
Vulnerability Assessments Help Enterprises Maintain Consistent Compliance With Standards
Sometimes organisations need to work within certain parameters: they have PCI DSS or other forms of compliance to adhere to and want to test if the current architecture, systems and devices would pass the test. They may want to run a port scan or check against everything on the OWASP Top 10 List. In such scenarios, a vulnerability assessment will provide a more realistic and systematic approach. Even a very large team of developers could never comprehensively reach the end of such tests.
Penetration Testing Helps All Organisations Keep Ahead of the Hackers
Penetration testing comes at security from a different angle. Testers will uncover security risks in the same way that hackers do – by conducting attacks with a single purpose in mind, to gain access to certain data or to change something on an organisation’s website, for example. Pen testers are best commissioned with an open mind, leaving them free to conduct both requested attacks and anything else that occurs to them, depending on their professional experience.
What About the Testers?
One of the most important questions to consider, to help distinguish between vulnerability assessment and pen testing, is: Who’s conducting the testing?
Information Security Professionals Establish Internal Procedures for Continuous Improvement
Contrary to some articles on the subject, vulnerability testing is not a fully-automated process in the sense that all it takes is to push a button. The person who manages regular, automated vulnerability assessments must be already skilled and experienced in information security procedures. They must know what environments and attack surfaces to assess and what to assess them for, as automated security scanners will still require some configuration. And they must be able to interpret the resulting reports and make recommendations on what needs to be done next.
In-house security professionals responsible for vulnerability assessment continuously add value to the security status of organisations and their resources. First, they can establish a baseline. They are likely to want to establish some systems, particularly an assessment schedule and reporting. They can help raise awareness within, while facilitating a continuous reduction in security risks. Meanwhile, they will most certainly expand their own knowledge and skills. Arguably, they are much more likely to feel loyal to an organisation in which they already work.
Penetration Testers Tell It Like It Is
Penetration testers, likewise, must also be knowledgeable professionals who are confident in their abilities.
Most professionals in the field recommend that penetration testers should be independent, external professionals. They must maintain enough distance from your company or systems that they are not hampered by concerns about personal financial security, loyalty or politics. This enables then to state the blunt truth about your security status, however much it hurts!
What About Cost?
How much vulnerability testing costs depends on the scope of the engagement. For small organizations the price will be significantly lower than for a big corporation with thousands of potentially vulnerable machines, IPs and internet facing hosts.
Regardless of the cost, vulnerability assessments produce a better yield on investment. While a pen test may be a deep slice of how secure your system is, it only reveals one thing in one direction. Vulnerability assessments take the long view, investing time and resources in developing systems and procedures that will yield a solid level of security on which to further develop your systems and integrate new components.
So, Which Approach Do We Select?
Simply put, do both. Both approaches have the capability to uncover gaping holes in your security and reveal other less obvious vulnerabilities, ones you weren’t even looking for. One thing is certain, if you’re not scanning or testing, you will encounter a loss of data. The only question is when. Whether it’s a known vulnerability that you’ve not addressed, or the result of a bored hacker’s Sunday afternoon adventures (yes, it’s true, they’re not all malicious!), the result is the same.
The mature, preventative approach is to establish vulnerability testing and scanning as part of your regular SDLC, and additionally employ some unusual types to do what a hacker might do, but on friendly terms (‘white box’ pen testing). Then you can read all the reports and results, examine the recommendations and make smart decisions on how to keep your organisation’s security posture ahead of the bad guys.
You can read the original article, here.
Sophos is committed to providing you with the best protection, performance and value in the industry and the latest NSS Labs retest of XG Firewall validates that we are delivering on that commitment. As expected, XG Firewall has performed extremely well blocking 100% of all evasions with excellent results across all other areas tested by NSS Labs. The results for both security effectiveness and total cost of ownership (TCO) per protected Mbps are outstanding.
Here’s a summary of the results:
- 100% Evasion Resistance
- 94.82% Exploit Block Rate
- 100% Resiliency Coverage
- 100% Stability and Reliability
- 6,194 Mbps tested throughput
- TCO per protected Mbps of $5.47
We encourage you to explore the full test results which are available for download.
You can also see how XG Firewall places on the NSS Labs Security Value Map (SVM) Chart (click to enlarge).
Sophos XG Firewall customers and partners don’t need to take any action as your firewall is providing optimal protection and performance. For those wondering about the HTML padded evasion techniques missed in the June 2018 NSS Labs Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) public test, those were addressed through adjusting the AV engine file size scanning parameters. No action is required as your firewall device comes with optimized default settings based on careful analysis of the current threat landscape. You can learn more about this setting in the XG Firewall Knowledge Base.
As you know, we never rest, and are relentlessly improving and innovating our products. In fact, we have a substantial new release of XG Firewall coming soon – watch this space for more details in the days ahead.
You can read the original article, here.
Apple’s iOS 12 is being released to the public today, and the great news is that Sophos Mobile already supports it. As soon as your users upgrade to the latest versions of the operating system we will be protecting them.
For more information about the features of iOS 12, take a look at Apple’s iOS product page.
If you’re managing Sophos Mobile via Sophos Central you can now control when iOS updates are installed, with the option to delay updates for up to 90 days should any custom application testing be required before roll out. If you’re running your own Sophos Mobile server you can also use the same controls once you’ve upgraded to Sophos Mobile 8.5.
Whenever you’re ready to update to iOS 12, Sophos Mobile is ready for you.
You can read the original article, here.
We’ve watched plenty of software demos over the years, be they with or without the thrill of live attacks involving things appearing on your screen, but there really is nothing quite like getting hands-on with a piece of hardware.
So, with our new APX Series access points, we thought we’d try our hand at one online phenomenon – the unboxing video.
If you haven’t got around to ordering your APX Series just yet, here’s a taste of what you can expect. We’ve gone for the subtle unboxing approach and in the interest of good taste – we’re a British company after all – have refrained from throwing any packaging on the floor.
What is an APX?
The APX Series is a new generation of 802.11ac Wave 2 access points, which can be managed through our Sophos Central platform and so alongside your Sophos Endpoint, Intercept X, Mobile, Server, Email and Encryption.
The first three models are already available in most regions:
The APX 120, an entry-level 2×2 model, will be introduced in late 2018 and further models are in planning for 2019.
The very observant amongst you may have noticed that the second digit in the model number correlates with the MIMO capability, which is fully intentional.
Management support in XG Firewall is planned for late 2018.
To find out more visit the APX Series and Sophos Wireless pages or take a look at the Sophos Central demo, which includes Wireless.
You can read the original article, here.