We spend our time almost exclusively helping clients benefit from robust, secure, well-managed IT infrastructures and systems, with their homes only considered for remote access.
But given the prevalence of viruses and cyber-crime, to say nothing of the growing number of sites unsuitable for minors, we are recommending for the first time a free home solution, to lessen the risks.
Let the right one in
Here at Quiss Technology, we work closely with Sophos, a highly respected British company that develops products for communication endpoint, encryption, network security, email security, mobile security and unified threat management.
Their products are our solutions of choice to keep clients’ systems safe. So, when we heard more about Sophos Home, a simplified version of their award-winning security product Sophos Central, we thought we would review it and offer our view on it.
The first point of note is the cost, or more accurately, the lack of one. It is free and can protect up to 10 machines, Mac and PC, from malware, viruses, ransomware and inappropriate or malicious websites.
System requirements:
- Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1 or Windows 10
- Mac OS X 10.10, 10.11, 10.12 or 10.13
- Minimum 1GB of free disk space
- Minimum 1GB of RAM
Supported Browsers for Home
- Microsoft Edge
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 10 or later
- Apple Safari
- Google Chrome
- Mozilla Firefox
Best of all, with a centrally managed web login, you can manage security settings for your whole family whether they share your home or live half way around the world.
Using real-time threat intelligence from SophosLabs, Home analyses suspicious behaviours and activities from files and programmes, to deliver proactive protection from new and developing threats.
Block unwanted content
Installing Sophos Home is simple and it will immediately help prevent you accidently connecting to malicious websites and traffic sources, like command and control servers run by cyber-criminals.
It will automatically block phishing attacks, stop you accessing websites that contain malware and viruses or fake websites pretending to be legitimate.
And for those of you with young internet users in the family, you can also control the content they view with web filtering – decide what to allow, warn or block for each computer. It’s your choice.
You just sign up and download the product onto each machine. The central admin page shows the status of the machines that have the tool and any alerts.
Homework help too
Although many of our clients allow remote working and users have specific machines and criteria to connect to work systems, Sophos Home is still a good product for organisations with a strong home-worker contingent, but no definitive rules.
It allows home machines used to access the network remotely, to be protected by a recognised vendor, not just letting individuals sort something out for themselves; if they remember.
Unfortunately, our support contracts with clients do not extend to non-commercial use products like Sophos Home, but you would have access to the Sophos community and online help to resolve any issues or queries that might arise post-installation.
Sophos so good
One of our system engineers installed the product at home and in his words: “All in all, it seems a pretty damn good service, especially for free. I’ve installed it on my kids’ machines and can’t see any down sides so far – hopefully a service that they keep supplying for free”.
Matt Rhodes, Commercial Services Manager, Quiss Technology plc
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