Advice Request What is Your opinion about Sophos Home?

[Sundaram999]

What do You think about Sophos Home free antivirus? Do You have any experience whith this security product?

 

[yigido]

Some conversations that already we had
Sophos Home: Totally free antivirus for home

https://malwaretips.com/threads/sophos-xg-firewall-home-edition.63180/

 

[Cats-4_Owners-2]

I think this is a good question @Sundaram999. I have yet to experience Sophos Home Free AV, and yet since Sophos is connected with Hitmanpro Alert (having acquired Surfright) and I am interested as to how others might feel about it's protection.
I think I'd better get caught up on my reading (thanks @yigido for the links!) and shall check back here later as well!

 

[Paul Lee]

I like the idea. Gives me another another free alternative if I ever decide to change my security solution (Which I do very often might I add )

 

[Soulbound]

Tried and for awhile was fine for average user who mainly installs and forget. Less hiccups than avast for sure and no bloat but at the same time lack of configuration options etc. If you are a minimalistic user great. If not there's other alternatives. A is better than B is and will always be subject to users opinions no matter how hard an individual or a group of individuals try to justify that it's better than another product.

So in the end try it yourself and see if you like it. I personally would not run it in any of my systems but that's because I can afford to perform maintenance even in shared systems

 

[Sundaram999]

lack of configuration options

Yes, that's right)))

 

[woodrowbone]

Weak zero-day protection,but one of the best web-filters.
If and when they connect it to their Cloud, and implement HPA it will be an awesome product.

/W

 

[ZeroDay]

Good AV, Solid web filter, but I'd add some zero day protection.

 

[nclr11111]

Giving it a try on my VM since Avast gives critical error.....

 

[jamescv7]

Their heuristics/generic detection is one of the active in Virustotal, many times where zero day samples are so premature; only Sophos manage to react in such quicker response time compare to other security products.

Simple, no such bloatwares and effective techniques (Cloud, IDS and others).

 

[nclr11111]

Too heavy for my VM.
Need better cpu in my secondary comp. Hard to run a decent VM on 1 core......

 

[kev216]

I used and tested Sophos home for about 4 months. It is a very decent product and I can recommend it.
One of the main advantages of this free AV is that you will never see any advertisement for their paid products. It's very simple and may be considered as a 'set and forget' AV. You first need to make an account on their website and then you can download an installer that is linked to your account. You can have up to 10 devices per account.
Everything needs to be controlled from your account in an online panel. There are no settings on the software itself, you can't even turn components off without logging in into the web interface. This is something that some people like and others not. The fact is that if you don't have internet acces for some reason, you can not change anything to the AV settings. But for family that doesn't know anything about pc's it's interesting that you can configure it for them at home when you don't have acces to that pc.
In their web filter, you can set rules for categories of websites that may be blocked (kind of parental control), but it's also good to know that if a website of a particular category is blocked, you can see in the web UI what website was blocked, when and on on which device. Everything is logged, so if you do surf to such websites, everyone who has acces to the main Sophos account can see that. (safe and not blocked websites of course not.)
Sophos offers business products, so they have excellent signatures, even for new malware, but it still lacks a zero day component, so in combination with Hitman pro (also from Sophos now) or someting similar you can make it a very good solution to protect you. They claim on their website that next to the heuristics and signatures, it has a HIPS module built in which works automatically to catch some nasty malwares.
Their web signatures are also great, in my own tests, everything it needed to block was blocked.
So it's either a product you like or not. If you are a fan of configuring every single component and have complete control, you might not find in Sophos what you need. If you want an easy tool that does what it needs to do, it's the software you are looking for. In my case it did it's job and I didn't noticed much slowdowns, but it needs quite some RAM. Detection is very good, but in combo with some zero day program, it's surely something to consider to use.

 

[Golden King]

I installed it on my sister's computer for about 5 months. Since then, she never asks me again about questions from AV product. And I like that.
This software is indeed very good for those who wants to install and forget. Or install on other's computers who don't know much about security, since it's impossible to change the configuration without logging to your Sophos account. And, by that, avoid the chance that they mess with the setting and lower the protection level, or sometime, get infected.
One minor problem is that in my case, the internet connection is not fast (3 mbps), if I switch on web protection, it will slow down the loading speed of web pages. Thus making my sister frustrated.

 

[Sundaram999]

I used and tested Sophos home for about 4 months. It is a very decent product and I can recommend it.
One of the main advantages of this free AV is that you will never see any advertisement for their paid products. It's very simple and may be considered as a 'set and forget' AV. You first need to make an account on their website and then you can download an installer that is linked to your account. You can have up to 10 devices per account.
Everything needs to be controlled from your account in an online panel. There are no settings on the software itself, you can't even turn components off without logging in into the web interface. This is something that some people like and others not. The fact is that if you don't have internet acces for some reason, you can not change anything to the AV settings. But for family that doesn't know anything about pc's it's interesting that you can configure it for them at home when you don't have acces to that pc.
In their web filter, you can set rules for categories of websites that may be blocked (kind of parental control), but it's also good to know that if a website of a particular category is blocked, you can see in the web UI what website was blocked, when and on on which device. Everything is logged, so if you do surf to such websites, everyone who has acces to the main Sophos account can see that. (safe and not blocked websites of course not.)
Sophos offers business products, so they have excellent signatures, even for new malware, but it still lacks a zero day component, so in combination with Hitman pro (also from Sophos now) or someting similar you can make it a very good solution to protect you. They claim on their website that next to the heuristics and signatures, it has a HIPS module built in which works automatically to catch some nasty malwares.
Their web signatures are also great, in my own tests, everything it needed to block was blocked.
So it's either a product you like or not. If you are a fan of configuring every single component and have complete control, you might not find in Sophos what you need. If you want an easy tool that does what it needs to do, it's the software you are looking for. In my case it did it's job and I didn't noticed much slowdowns, but it needs quite some RAM. Detection is very good, but in combo with some zero day program, it's surely something to consider to use.

Thank you very much my friend for detailed description)))

 

[Sundaram999]

if I switch on web protection, it will slow down the loading speed of web pages.

I agree))

 

[Atlas147]

I think this is a good question @Sundaram999. I have yet to experience Sophos Home Free AV, and yet since Sophos is connected with Hitmanpro Alert (having acquired Surfright) and I am interested as to how others might feel about it's protection.
I think I'd better get caught up on my reading (thanks @yigido for the links!) and shall check back here later as well!

Unfortunately even though Sophos acquired Surfright, they do not use Hitmanpro's detection capabilities in their home product (or in any product for that matter), probably due to the fact that hitmanpro uses third party definitions and using them in more products means paying for to them.

Tested this in a VM a few days ago, infected it, then ran a scan with Sophos, cleaned, then ran a scan with hitmanpro. The end result shows hitmanpro has detections Sophos didn't catch.

Very unfortunate that the acquisition is just to boost sales.

 

[bunchuu]

Unfortunately even though Sophos acquired Surfright, they do not use Hitmanpro's detection capabilities in their home product (or in any product for that matter), probably due to the fact that hitmanpro uses third party definitions and using them in more products means paying for to them.

Tested this in a VM a few days ago, infected it, then ran a scan with Sophos, cleaned, then ran a scan with hitmanpro. The end result shows hitmanpro has detections Sophos didn't catch.

Very unfortunate that the acquisition is just to boost sales.

or eliminate possible competitor. However, how about combine sophos home with anti-exec like VodooShield (to enhance zero day protection)?

 

[Maziar Ansari]

just free .