Sophos Home

[Kahlil Algya]

SoI decided to have a meeting in London a few months ago with @sophossecurity and it literally blew my mind. They showed me how easy it is for cyber criminals to hack you - but also how easy it is to stop those trying to get to you.

I've been using Sophos at work for many years and put the Home version it on a computer at home recently. I found the tip for stopping the Premium trial nag during the first 30 days but now I'm through that I keep getting popups nagging me to buy Premium. I don't want to buy Premium, but there doesn't appear to be a way of stopping the pop-ups. Anyone found anything?

Here's what happened:I was transferring a quite large number of small files (.CSV, .PNG above all) from an old USB stick that never gave me any problem from one (allegedly safe) laptop (win10, win defender) to another one (also allegedly safe, win11 with Sophos home).

I get a warning from Sophocle that says that it blocked explorer.exe from executing malicious attack, but not malicious Software has been found in the files. Checking the history in the dashboard, the software refers to blocking a ransomware attack, as explorer.exe was try to encrypt a number of files. The files involved were created by myself with the first laptop through python hence they can't contain malware.After the warning I tried to still move those files, without success. Also, if I tried to change name or move other files from other folders, explorer was asking me for admin rights to do so. Even after giving admin rights, I could not move the files as it would say that I require the rights from "Everyone". Since I thought Sophos somehow killed explorer.exe, I rebooted the laptop. No issues in moving or renaming files, until I tried to move those same files mentioned above. Same warning as before, same issue. I repeated the process of rebooting and trying to move those files a few times ro understand what was going on, a few times getting warming about a potential ransomware from explorer.exe and some other time from surrogate com 10 (but looking in the dashboard history it was referring to dllhost.exe). A couple of times I had a message that I needed the admin rights from LAPTOPNAME to do the action, but the issue was gone after rebooting. Except for the laptop seeming a bit slower (maybe it's my imagination) I don't see anything strange. No processes taking up much cpu or ram. A full Sophos scan revealed no threats. I did not try open some files on the laptop to see if they are actually encrypted but it seems to me that their extensions have not been changed (as it would instead happen from ransomware attack).

What do you think about the story? Have I been attacked by ransomware or did Sophos allucinate? By trying to move some files after the issue, and giving admin rights in the attempt to do so, could I have triggered something bad? Why would the action of copying files from the USB stick trigger an encryption attempt (and warning from Sophos)?

I just think once you start giving out username and passwords for application installation and updates, then it becomes really difficult to manage in terms of will you really know if non-employees use a solution that the company pays for.

Nate1195, there is a way you can deploy a standalone package with ur enterprise username/password for remote update. Not sure which version u have. It was supported upto 7.5 endpoints (check the knowledgebase or contact their support).

currently i havent looked at 9.5 but the requirement is u poke a whole in ur firewall so that remote hosts can call home (ie ur internal SAV server) than Sophos. (will update thread if i find the sol)

It seems to have taken a bit of coaxing and going directly to the account manager (I started by emailing customer care) but he agreed with what you said Justin. I should be getting a second set of credentials soon.

It even includes the ability to set restrictions on what kind of websites each computer has access to (my 12 year old is no longer spending his college savings on the Draft Kings fantasy football site).

Thanks for your question. Our engineers informed me that you need to uninstall existing Sophos products before you can install Sophos Home. For more information on this see our knowledgebase article. However, we believe Sophos Home will be an upgrade for you. You get the same great protection with Sophos Home as our commercial version, with the new cloud management console, improved UI on the agent, and the ability to manage multiple agents from a single cloud based console. And it is of course completely free. If you have any other questions, please check out our Sophos Home community board.

(Yes, the XG Firewall provides an additional layer of defence for your Sophos Home-protected laptops and desktops, too. If you push all your home network traffic through it, you essentially get two bites at the defensive cherry for your desktops and laptops.)

Hi Kevin, Thanks for your question. Sophos does not hold any personally identifiable information other than the email address you use to sign in and whatever you tell us your name is when you register (this does not need to be your real name). We also store the device names of your computers so that you can identify which is which. The information that our software sends back to Sophos is limited to what we need to identify malware or websites that you wish to block (for example, URLs that you browse to or checksums of executable files you open). However we do not store any of this data, with the exception of storing the URL of a malicious site or a site we have blocked for you or a site that you have chosen to block through policy. In this case we store the information so that you can see in your Sophos Home console which sites we have blocked for you. [edited]

Would be really cool if you guys consider adding two-way firewall for Sophos Home, I know Sophos already offers something similar seperately but i feel like having a firewall built in to Sophos Home would be more easier for home users to setup.

Currently, Sophos Home cannot run alongside another antivirus program, like Kaspersky Antivirus. This is the case for many, if not all antivirus programs. However, second opinion scanners and removal tools, such as HitmanPro and HitmanPro.Alert, can run alongside Sophos Home and other antiviruses

Our business model of making Sophos products available online to everyone means we get a wide variety of requests every day. They range from small two-man operations, to large companies with multiple locations worldwide. Since virtually anyone can buy Sophos from us, home users are also frequent guests in our online store.

The Sophos firewalls are already a great thing. But what else can we say about it, after all, we deal with it every day. ? No, but seriously: even if we are sometimes a little critical of Sophos and are not super satisfied with everything, Sophos Firewalls are among the best on the market. They are therefore very popular for a reason, but unfortunately a little too expensive for many people for home use.

If you like your security software trim and without the fat, Sophos Home Premium should do the trick. Based on the company's business security software, Sophos Home Premium provides the essentials with very few extras, making it one of the least expensive, if not quite one of the best antivirus programs available.

That said, Sophos Home Premium is spare and shorn of many features we take for granted in a premium security suite, such as VPN access, a password manager or file shredding and encryption. And even though it's bare-bones, Sophos Home Premium moderately reduces a system's performance potential while it's scanning for malware.

If you want a full-featured, more expensive security suite, look to the likes of Bitdefender, Kaspersky or Norton. But if you like a bargain that can protect your PC, Sophos Home Premium might be for you.

While its competitors each offer between three and five antivirus products with escalating numbers of features and price tags, Sophos concentrates on just two. The free Sophos Home product offers basic protection for three systems, Mac or PC, and the paid Sophos Home Premium, which covers up to 10 systems for $60 per year. There's no unlimited-device license.

Sophos offers a 30-day free trial of Home Premium, and the subscription is often discounted by 25% for the first year, but there's no single-compute option. This puts anyone who wants to protect only a couple of systems at a price disadvantage. On the other hand, because Sophos Home Premium costs about half what other antivirus brands charge for their flagship products, it's a genuine bargain, even if its sparse features make it more like the competition's mid-range programs.

Sophos Home Premium uses machine learning to block phishing and ransomware attacks and webcam and microphone snooping. There's no hardened browser, but Sophos can encrypt keystrokes, stop potentially unwanted applications (PUAs) and block known dangerous websites, and its online account lets you remotely scan your other computers as long as they're online.

Sophos Home Premium is based on the company's business-minded Intercept X security software and works with Windows 7 (with Service Pack 1) through Windows 10. Macs require macOS 10.12 (Sierra) through 10.15 (Catalina), but the latest macOS 11.0.1 (Big Sur) release only protects against malware; in the coming months, Sophos will add website blocking to its repertoire. There are Intercept X apps for phones and tablets that require at least Android version 5.0 or iOS version 11.

Sophos Anti-Virus for Linux is free and compatible with most major 64-bit Linux distributions, including CentOS, Debian, Red Hat, SUSE and Ubuntu, but it isn't integrated into the PC and Mac software. If that's not enough, Sophos offers free stand-alone security tools and utilities, including the Hitman Pro malware removal applications and two software firewalls.

In addition to scanning for known threats, Sophos Home 's heuristic monitor looks for early signs of an attack while new and unique threats are uploaded to the company's Security Lab for analysis. Several times a day, Sophos updates the malware-signature databases of its 3 million users.

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