Sophos antivirus

[kloshar]

Hello!

Do you recomend Sophos Antivirus program? It seems to be quite good thing.

[wizard]

For companies yes. For private use no.

wizard

[kloshar]

Why not for private use? There are many people who use this antivirus at home.

[Karl_Menshy]

I personally think that Sophos is a nice home AV, too. The only issue is that the updating process is heavily based on network resources. Updating at home means to download ide files by hand and then place them into the program dir.

But besides updating, the intercheck technology is really a nice feature on older comps.

Oh, and yes, pricing...last time I checked they did not sell a home license but rather a minimum of a 5-licenses package, anybody more info on this?

[wizard]

{QUOTE-> quoting: kloshar link=board=24;threadid=18754;start=0#msg115405 date=1073080429]
Why not for private use? There are many people who use this antivirus at home.
<-QUOTE}

Sophos is a product designed to support large companies networks. That's there strength. Besides that it offers nothing special to support home users. It starts with having no heuristics, no unpacking engine and limited detection of malware targeting home users like all sorts of trojans and so on.

The other big disadvantage is the price. It is compared to other av's extremely expensive (from a home user's point of view).

For home users other av products are definitly a better choice.

wizard

[kloshar]

Huh, I know lot, but realy lot of people who use Sophos at home. And they say that it is realy perfect. Just updating. But if you know how to do it, you can make Scheduled task to open its site every day. So the updating is not a problem.

{QUOTE-> Besides that it offers nothing special to support home users. <-QUOTE}

Yes, that is true.

{QUOTE-> It starts with having no heuristics, no unpacking engine and limited detection of malware targeting home users like all sorts of trojans and so on. <-QUOTE}

I don't agree with that. It has very strong heuristics, unpacking engine is better than f-secure's, and it can detect all kind of things. Trust me.

[ronjor]

{QUOTE-> Sophos is a product designed to support large companies networks. That's there strength. Besides that it offers nothing special to support home users. It starts with having no heuristics, no unpacking engine and limited detection of malware targeting home users like all sorts of trojans and so on.

The other big disadvantage is the price. It is compared to other av's extremely expensive (from a home user's point of view).

For home users other av products are definitly a better choice.

wizard <-QUOTE}


VERY expensive!

[Paranoid2000]

Sophos is aimed at business users and those I know who use it speak well of Sophos' support (which is doubtless why it costs so much compared to others). If you think you will need that support then it should be worth your consideration.

[Technodrome]

{QUOTE->
I don't agree with that. It has very strong heuristics, unpacking engine is better than f-secure's, and it can detect all kind of things. Trust me. <-QUOTE}

Are you sure you are talking about Sophos?

Sophos heavily relies on virus signatures database. No heuristics engine is used at all. It can detect some viruses genetically but that about it.

No it does have unpacking engine at all. It only supports a few archives (ARJ, CMZ, GZIP, RAR, RAR3, TAR, UUE, ZIP, LHA, LZH, BZip2, Stuffit).


tECHNODROME

[noone]

{QUOTE-> VERY expensive! <-QUOTE}
Most corporations get a license for their employees' home computers along with the site license... I think just about all people who use it at home get it for free from their employers.

Like most other corporate editions, it's no-frills, and according to its proponents, thus lighter, faster and more stable than a lot of home-user targeted AVs.

[ronjor]

{QUOTE-> Most corporations get a license for their employees' home computers along with the site license... I think just about all people who use it at home get it for free from their employers.

Like most other corporate editions, it's no-frills, and according to its proponents, thus lighter, faster and more stable than a lot of home-user targeted AVs. <-QUOTE}


I trialed it long ago not knowing who it was targeted to. Very nice interface and ran very well on a win98 machine.

[AMRX]

dear Wizard and Technodrome, Sophos DOES have heuristic detection capability and it also has unpacking support for packers viz. Diet, LZEX, Petite, PKLite, UPX, etc. in addition it uses checksumming technology just like KAV 5.

[AgentX]

I second that.
Sophos mentions its heuristics in the datasheets and manuals.
However, it's not very effective against 'other' malware, an arena where KAV, McAfee
and F-Secure really shine.

Regards,
AgentX

[AMRX]

malwares poses as a threat when the surfing habits go wild. with some common sense even NAV provides good protection.

[AgentX]

I agree! But even with all the good habits, one can't escape from being trapped in an
unwarranted situation. That's why they say, "Better safe than sorry!". ;)

- AgentX

[AMRX]

hmmm.... nowadays those blasted vulnerabilities are causing all this trouble. Panda IS is now detecting vulnerabilities and prompting user to download and install patches. how cool can that be.

[Technodrome]

{QUOTE-> dear Wizard and Technodrome, Sophos DOES have heuristic detection capability . <-QUOTE}

Sophos uses genetic approach as I said above. This approach usually will only detect viruses within the same family.

{QUOTE-> and it also has unpacking support for packers viz. Diet, LZEX, Petite, PKLite, UPX, etc. in addition it uses checksumming technology just like KAV 5. <-QUOTE}

There is no etc. Sophos is able to unpack only a few common of hundreds packers (you named them all). Does this make a good unpacking engine? No. It makes no unpacking engine at all.

When it comes to classic detection, Sophos AV is very good scanner.

tECHNODROME

[bigc73542]

I personally have to agree with technodrome that sophos is a very good corporate av but not a very good av for home users, it just wasn't written to be a home av.

bigc

[COZY]

I've been working with a company using Sophos for over a year now, I'm not a 'Techie' so I wouldn't know the in's and out's of the program but as the company I work for has no IT dept as such I tend to have to cover this area.

My own experience is that for those with a limited knowledge (like myself) the support doesn't cater for a 'home user / novice' standard. Sophos aims itself at a corporate / everyone's an IT wizz kid level - an attitude which I have on several occasions found somewhat annoying particularly when every machine on our netwrok seems to have been infected and teh terminology been used is/was baffling!!

The update side of things was solved by the installation of another piece of software called enterprise manager which updates the server and then workstations on the network automatically. However the AV has no in built update facility therefore making it tedious to update manually.

Overall I personally haven't been that impressed although they do seem to be winning numerous awards so they must be doing something right!

[AMRX]

dear Technodrome, its true that due to the nature of genetic algorithm, Sophos can catch variants of the same family, thats heuristics. you can't say Sophos doesn't use heuristics. also when i used ETC i meant things like PeCompact, Aspack, Neolite, wwpack32, so i didn't name them all. i'd add that it means it has some unpacking capability rather than NO UNPACKING capability. there are AVs that doesn't use heuristics at all and with no unpacker support. just don't let others confuse Sophos with them. i'm sure you'll understand.