By Tom Noda
UK-based security solutions company Sophos is targeting the middle market, as well as the small and medium enterprises (SME) space in the Philippines, with the arrival of its new Sophos SG Series appliances.
Sophos chief technology officer Gerhard Eschelbeck officially announced the availability of the company’s next generation UTM (unified threat management) hardware built to address the two main challenges that SMEs face toady: insufficient budgets and the lack of in-house experts.
“We are very focused on the mid-market. This is where we optimize our products for companies who don’t have a full scale security department,” Eschelbeck said. “And by doing so, we are simplifying our products, making them easy to use in those environments.”
In a recent Sophos survey of 2,000 SMB respondents globally, a total of 42 percent cited short budgets as their main challenge in having a secure environment, while 33 percent pointed at the lack of security expertise.
Eschelbeck said the underdeveloped security management and weak awareness of many SMEs increase security risks in their companies as they adopt technology trends such as bring-your-own-device (BYOD) and cloud computing.
Eschelbeck said the new SG Series appliances are the sixth generation of Sophos security gateways. The Sophos SG Serrun, the latest Sophos UTM 9.2 operating system, features over 150 enhancements including new Advanced Threat Protection and SPX Email Encryption functionality. Version 9.2 can also be deployed on Intel-compatible servers as virtual appliances and in the cloud using Amazon Web Services.
“In addition to the focus that we have on the mid-market is our focus around the breadth of our products. We cover from endpoint to network, to mobile, to encryption, to server, to cloud. So we cover the whole needs for companies,” he said.
“We cover all products that we offer in terms of full stack, from hardware to the software and in some cases our partners provide different support levels.”
He added the SG series includes models that meet the requirements of small offices to distributed enterprises. These 1U appliances are available in the mid-range 200, 300 and 400 models. They all deliver over 10 Gbit/sec firewall throughput to easily handle the demands of multi-layered protection.
Sophos last August has once again positioned itself in the “Leaders” quadrant of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for UTM. The quadrant is based on an assessment of a company’s ability to execute and completeness of vision.
