FarrandMckinley20

Sophos has recently released their new 9.5 endpoint protection that includes cloud integration and a firewall.As you may know, Personally i have tried Sophos antivirus programs for 8 years, and I've been generally happy with the performance. I now have one installation protecting a windows server and appreciate taking care free capability in comparison to competitors.Furthermore, i appreciate how the company is often on the forefront of combating the most up-to-date viruses and exploits (essentially pushing the boundaries in the market). Also new in this version, is tamper and web protection,Sophos Live realtime updating, and more.Setting up Sophos 9.5 was easy. There are two versions with the endpoint protection, the 70 megabyte standard, as well as the 75 megabyte edition with a firewall.What%u2019s nice is always that both setup files support 32 and 64 bit systems all the way up back to Windows 2000, a single compact executable. The installer prompted to put in the not compulsory firewall component and has an option to get rid of vacation security software which could conflict with program. After the installation completed, a restart was necessary to install the firewall driver. After the reboot, it took Windows a different 20 seconds to complete booting on the desktop. The Sophos 9.5 scanning options remain the same while using %u201CScan my computer%u201D along with the %u201Cset up a whole new scan%u201D. However, inside customize scan option you will find new settings to configure. Within the advanced area one can possibly specifically set to decompress which kinds of archives and which kind files to skip.This definitely seems to be probably the most advanced exclusion type list of all free antivirus tested. Sophos 9.5 scans at approximately 6 to 7 megabytes per second putting it slightly across the benchmark antivirus sophos antivirus This system immediately detected a computer virus around the test system which ironically is Blue Atom Antivirus (Antivirus.exe along with a Sus/Com-Pack-C).This is clearly the wrong positive and which I believe is caused by a very sensitive HIPS engine.We have also received an incorrect positive from Webex PcNow by Cisco with a Reg-Mon alert.NirCmd.exe was also found on the test system which is actually malicious.The scan takes some time to end (speed hasn%u2019t changed significantly from previous versions and after 20 mins used to be on 2% presumably due to rootkit scan which is separate and slow).If an individual wants the scan being faster disable the rootkit option.As well as an antivirus engine, Sophos 9.5 incorporates a firewall.The problem is that this firewall prompts for every network /application protection.By way of example, simply opening a standard browser for example Traveler or FireFox, the first is prompted allowing or disallow.The tradeoff is that for a small company or organization a substantial firewall rule set could be valuable in keeping unwanted connections in and out of a system, however, for someone, this may be extremely tedious to classify each and every firewall rule (not forgetting the air boxes are in another order from tuned in to alert).I do think the firewall should at the very least include some auto learning rules for common applications. However, some good things about the firewall are its advanced handling of ICMP traffic (a frequently abused protocol),a LAN exclusion list for local networked computers, location based rule sets for roaming and wireless users, as well as an improved logging system which shows active connections and hidden processes.Some additional intriguing features would be the tamper protection when a user a must enter defined password to uninstall or change the program, along with a secondary update server if reduce costs failed.