Sophos has launched its first syncronised security protection solution for endpoints and networks, Sophos Heartbeat.
The vendor said the technology directly links next-generation firewalls and unified threat management (UTM) with endpoint security to share threat intelligence to enable faster detection of threats, automatic isolation of infected devices, and more immediate and targeted response and resolution.
Sophos claims the solution will advance defences against increasingly coordinated and stealthy attacks and drive a dramatic reduction in the time and resources required to investigate and address security incidents.
The Security Heartbeat is effectively a measurement of the threat level of each endpoint on a network based upon analytics of behavior of the endpoint. The solution is said to give real-time information about suspicious behaviour or malicious activity between endpoints and the network firewall or UTM.
The solution is enabled and included as part of the Sophos XG Firewall and Sophos Cloud-managed endpoint protection.
Sophos does 100 per cent of its business through the channel. The company’s regional vice president and managing director Asia Pacific, Stuart Fisher, said The company had identified its target market as the mid-market.
“These are organisations between 50 to a couple of thousand users that have fairly complicated, decentralised network infrastructure and outlying offices,” he said.
“They have an IT manager but don’t have dedicated security professionals looking after their network. They are trying to work with multiple vendors and multiple products, they are trying to deliver a layer of protection across their organisation that is complicated by nature.”
This target market is key to the solution the vendor has deployed. Sophos developed a solution it said is easy to manage for IT professionals that do not have a high level of security sophistication as is common in the mid-market.
The vendor has also released a partner dashboard for the Heartbeat solution, allowing MSSP partners to manage multiple networks from their own infrastructure or via the Sophos Cloud.
Sophos vice president of product management, Chris Kraft, explained the company’s approach to its channel.
“Our philosophy is that we do not monetise our relationship with our partners. Our success is built on the success of our partners. We don’t do business direct. When partners are successful, we are successful,” he said.
Fisher added that the solution was developed based, in part, on feedback from partners.
“What the channel has been telling us is that is is very expensive to maintain relationships with multiple vendors,” he explained.
“The feedback that we are getting is, if the partner deploys Sophos as a point solution for customers under an MSSP program, they can start to deploy and drop additional products and feature functionality as each customer requires.”
“They may already have a number of solutions that they deploy and when those come up for renewal they deploy the Sophos solution instead. This is not an all in at the start, this is start with endpoint, then look at encryption, mobile devices, network and so on.”
