Sophos Whitepapers

This paper explores the reasons behind ransomware’s longevity, including the factors that have enabled it to get faster, smarter, and deadlier over the years, and what we must learn from this history if we are to minimize our risk of attack in the future.

It also dives into three new areas where the dirty tentacles of ransomware are starting to take hold, enabled by recent changes in technology and society. Finally, it looks the technologies and behaviors organizations should adopt to ensure they have the best possible defense against ransomware and showcases how Sophos can help.

The results reveal the day-to-day experiences of IT teams across the globe when it comes to network threats and next-gen firewalls. The survey sheds new light onto the practical reality of today’s network security and the challenges IT teams face. It also reveals the Achilles heel of next-gen firewalls: the struggle to balance performance, privacy, and protection.

Next-gen firewalls are failing to deliver on their promise to provide application awareness. There’s an inherent limitation in the effectiveness of signature based application detection techniques that means the majority of app traffic on today’s networks is going unidentified and unchecked. It’s a significant and serious problem. It presents enormous security, productivity, performance, and compliance risks.

Fortunately, there’s an elegant and effective solution: Synchronized App Control leverages Sophos unique Security Heartbeat™ connection between Sophos Central managed endpoints and XG Firewall to share network application information with absolute clarity.

XG Firewall with Synchronized App Control is able to automatically identify, classify and control all unknown application traffic on the network. It’s a major breakthrough in network visibility and control that renders all other next-gen firewalls obsolete.