Sophos Home: Totally free antivirus for home

[juhful]

Sophos wouldn't work on my computer, Chrome kept shutting down, then system would freeze - anyone else had such issues?

Yes Tony, I have had that same experience, my PC was unusable with Sophos installed. Running Windows 10 Pro 64bit here, I really wanted to try Sophos as it looks promising but it just doesn't seem compatable with my system.

 

[RmG152]

I tried to add Sophos Home XG firewall to the mix on my desktop PC. Now Sophos Home and all my other programs are removed. Windows restore is not working, please advice?

Sophos XG Firewall Home Edition uses, their own Operating System (linux based I think), how you installed it? and where?

You need to install it on Virtual Machine or in a computer erasing all old data.

 

[Windows_Security]

Reverted back to Windows image, all is well, thanks

 

[motox781]

After using Sophos Home for a good month on 10 different installs for family, I have to say: Great Job!

Install and maintenance was easy. Monitoring always works remotely. No unexpected errors so far across all installed PCs. I am also finding the detection rate to be wonderful. Very little false positives. One thing I also love is PUP detection seems to be very strong. System is very light. Web protection seems to be very good. I love the built in parental controls too. I don't mind not having local control. I could see where this would be a problem if you were the person without access to admin controls (web controls).

Great product and thanks for developing this very polished product.

Pros:
- Clean/Simple Program and Web UI
- Polished well: clean code, little errors, nice looking icons/font/background
- Web control works well
- Parental control that is easy to use
- Great detection rate on Malware
- Great detection rate on PUPs
- Very little false postives
- Web protection that actually works well
- Easy to install on multiple PCs
- Uses very little resources. Doesn't have a large impact on performance
- Web control offers history view of past events (blocks pages, blocked malware/pups)
- NO bloat features (registry cleaner, sandbox browser, defrag, ...etc)
- No ADs or popups for free AV
- Good privacy policy
- FREE no strings attached

Cons:
- Simple AV with little settings (+ for me)
- No local control
- Has a slightly larger impact on performance than Webroot or Defender.

 

[Alkajak]

@Kim at Sophos

Did my first test with Sophos Home just now. It took me about an hour and a half. Not because it genuinely took long. Because of inconsistencies.

Same pack, reverting from snapshot 5 times:

Test 1: 1 file removed on static scan.
Test 2: 2 files removed on static scan.
Test 3: 3 files removed on static scan.
Test 4: 1 file removed on static scan.
Test 5: 1 file removed on static scan.

Dynamic testing:

Sophos Home gives notification that Locky malware was blocked. Does not show up on Sophos Dashboard. Locky infects VM.

I am going to continue testing the product as I really do like it, but these inconsistencies make testing both difficult and inaccurate.

 

[Pat MacKnife]

I suggest for better help and feedback is to join their forum (community) because there are some fine people that work at Sophos engineering, that can go deeper into this issues.

Sophos Home for Windows - Sophos Home - Sophos Community

Edit: I have uninstalled Sophos after 8 weeks because on my machine its causing slowdowns affecting other programs.
Only 1 good point is their webprotection.
Malware blocking is so so ....
But my main problem was this slowdown on several machines.... installed Avira free for now and see a big difference in computer speed, back at full speed!

 

[Alex at Sophos]

Two things to note: First, just like @Pat MacKnife said, if you have any issues with Sophos Home, report them on the Sophos Home Community because our Engineers review all the reported bugs and issues. I've set in on a few of the review meetings and they do take it seriously and take action! And if you have any recommendations for Sophos Home, be sure to post it there as well. We'll take on any good ideas.

The second bit of news: Sophos Home for Mac Update 1.1.3
Our new release for Mac will be a staged rollout starting today. The rollout will take approximately one week. If the update is available for you, it will automatically update. You can also check in Sophos Menu > Update Now.

Fixes:
· Repetitive threat reporting for invalid locations: When a threat was backed up to Time Machine, users would get multiple notifications of threats detected at invalid locations, typically ‘/’. These notifications will now stop. There is no threat to the user (because of Time Machine location) and if the threat is restored, Sophos Home will clean it up accordingly.
· Mac full disk scan does not respect exclusions: A full disk scan in Sophos Home (started locally or remotely in the cloud) will now respect exclusions specified by the user, which aligns with what the Windows version was already doing.

 

[Guest28]

I loved sophos home when i used it detection was right on par with avast. One great thing to mention sophos has an amazing web blocker. The only thing that i wish sophos would do is have a "delete all or resolve all threats" button. It gets very tiresome to remove all threats manually one by one. Has this been fixed in version 1.3?

 

[soccer97]

Thanks for the help! Someone else mentioned that it might be more appropriate in another forum too. Thanks for the guidance! And yes, it's stable.

For a college course, I did an analysis of the UTM Appliance and some on the UTM firewall for home users (not real live testing). I was really impressed. If they essentially begin offering something similar to Sophos Internet Security with HitmanPro.Alert built in for home users and/or endpoints, I would use it. They have always been good for Macs.

 

[AlphaBeta]

Got my VM infected with a ton of zero day threats thanks to Sophos Home. If it's a worm or something similar, and Sophos detects it the very next day, you're in for huge number of alerts that just won't stop. You can't turn them off, or choose quarantine or delete either. I'm never trying Sophos again for the next few years.

 

[Kuttz]

Compared to some other popular free anti virus software Sophos Home is ineffective when you throw a bunch of brand new malware samples and try to execute it. Sophos Home works fine if you are going after malware infected web sites which Sophos mostly denies access to such sites which is good. Sophos Home is also pretty heavy in system resource usage. Once you installed Sophos Home in your PC the first thing we notice is the slow folder navigation. When we open a folder containing a lot files especially .exe files for the first time since after boot it is very slow to display all the file icons. It is irritating to see such a sluggish behavior. Sophos home also heavy on RAM usage in the range of 200MBs.

I was compelled to stop using Sophos Home sometime ago due its comparatively weaker zero day detection ability, heavy system resource usage and unfriendly user interface that the software don't even have the basic Quarantine feature. Sophos Home has the potential to become the best free anti virus for that to happen Sophos needs to improve, optimize their software considerably.

 

[DJ Panda]

Yeah Avast is really good with protection and detection on default but can get even greater with some setting tweaks. Has been my main AV for 8 years and will stay like that for awhile more.

 

[soccer97]

Got my VM infected with a ton of zero day threats thanks to Sophos Home. If it's a worm or something similar, and Sophos detects it the very next day, you're in for huge number of alerts that just won't stop. You can't turn them off, or choose quarantine or delete either. I'm never trying Sophos again for the next few years.

I did an analysis of its (XG UTM) features, not actual sample testing. From you guys response, I don't think I will. I was hoping that the XG Firewall + the AV would work well. Has a ways to go.

 

[nishaddesilva]

Anybody still use this? How good is it?

 

[FrFc1908]

Anybody still use this? How good is it?

I think it is best to ask @kev216 about this he is an avid user of this product and I am pretty sure he is willing to share his thoughts with you on this program!

 

[Faybert]

Anybody still use this? How good is it?

Well in my opinion and experience, it did not go well, in addition to having diminished system performance, there are other very superior and complete free options.

 

[kev216]

Anybody still use this? How good is it?

Thanks @Trickster for mentioning.
@nishadrox Yes I still use this AV. It's been my main AV now for more than a year. Made some switches to other products, but after some days or weeks, I always come back to it. I really like the simplicity and the lightness of the program. Does what it needs to do for me. If you have questions about the program, just ask!

 

[nishaddesilva]

Thanks @Trickster for mentioning.
@nishadrox Yes I still use this AV. It's been my main AV now for more than a year. Made some switches to other products, but after some days or weeks, I always come back to it. I really like the simplicity and the lightness of the program. Does what it needs to do for me. If you have questions about the program, just ask!

Is it stable and light on the system? And how is the configuration, settings stuff?

 

[Syafiq]

@nishadrox I have ever tried Sophos Home Premium BETA version, i never encountered any issues and it's light on my system. But, now I'm running Emsisoft AM on my system because I got an Emsisoft license from a giveaway

 

[kev216]

Is it stable and light on the system? And how is the configuration, settings stuff?

First I want to make clear that I'm using the free version and not the beta one with the extra features.
On my system it runs very smooth. I didn't notice any slowdowns during the past months. Also when downloading files, there is no lag because of scanning. I had performance issues with lot's of other antivirus products on my laptop, but never with Sophos. Also it is very stable. I tried it the first time when it was still in beta in 2016, and even then it was very stable. No issues about that so far.
Concerning configuration and settings, there is not so much room for configuration at least not for the free version. If you try the beta (which you can use for 1 year for free after the beta stage will be over), you get more settings and protection modules. The free version, which I am using, consists of signature based protection, PUP protection, a very good web blocker, parental controls, protection based on file reputation and a completely automated HIPS module for detection of suspicious behaviour. The (in the future paid) beta version adds keylogger prevention, more sophisticated ransomware protection (i.e not only signatures as in free version) etc.
For the settings, you need to login into the dashboard at Free Antivirus for Home Networks: Secure 10 PCs and Macs Free | Sophos. Everything is managed there, there are no local settings on your machine. The settings I use for the free version are all default settings (So real time protection, web protection and PUP enabled). You can adjust the web filtering as parental control under the web filtering tab if you want, but I don't do that personally. The only setting I changed is under protection -> Web -> Download reputation, where I set the level to strict instad of recommended, to get more protection, based on file reputation.