Vendor's antivirus software homepage:
http://www.sophos.com
Pros - Sophos Antivirus:
Click on screenshot for full-sized image.
From the website: "Sophos Antivirus is a complete anti-virus solution with network functionality at its core. It was designed specifically for the corporate network and offers an easily updated, flexible business solution for managing the complexity of networks from small local area networks to large multi-server, multi-platform WANs."
Fueled by the discovery of several add-on features not found in most other antivirus software, we had high hopes for this product. Sophos Antivirus has central management support, allows third-party applications to integrate with the antivirus detection engine, allows multiple scheduled jobs to be configured, password protection of settings, and other goodies. But we quickly got disappointed.
Sophos Antivirus is maybe the fastest antivirus scanner out there, using an intelligent method of checksumming to minimise the number of times each file needs to be scanned. Sophos Antivirus also supports all common archive formats, except WinAce.
Yes, Sophos Antivirus has many special features, but what's bad about Sophos Antivirus is the lack of many features that we require in an antivirus program. Sophos Antivirus has no quarantine function, no heuristic engine, no support for ActiveX, and no configurable on-demand scan
The update process of virus definition files is another disappointing story. As we understand it, you either have to perform/repeat an specific installation/upgrade task once every month, or you have to manually download them from the website, in which case you need a password. According to the vendor, the program is only updated once a month, and in the meantime new definition files are only issued when a virus is considered especially dangerous.
Email is not supported, but a separate tool, MailManager, offers support for SMTP, Notes, Exchange, - and yet another tool, Sophos SAVI should support POP3, and will also integrate with MailManager.
Sophos Antivirus is not easy to use - and it's not easy to buy Sophos either. They have no webshop, so you will have to order by fax, mail or email. However, you can buy and download Sophos Antivirus from a reseller. Check out http://www.a1eb.com, or search Google.
Sophos Antivirus will not be useful for the home user. Sophos supports an extensive range of network features and central management tasks, but the lack of many basic features leaves us wondering if Sophos would be good for anyone but advanced network users.
Sophos is one company where virus issues are as important as the software itself ... The client is fairly easy to use bar a couple of minor elements, such as the F1 key failing to bring up the help menu ... It's easy to create a new scan and pick the scan options, or create a new schedule.
Sophos doesn't offer a heuristic scanner, relying on signature files instead. The only scan options provided are scan level: quick or full. A quick scan looks only in the part of a file likely to contain a virus.
http://www.vnunet.com/Products/Software/1129163
InfoWorld
March, 2002
InfoWorld's Test Center selected Sophos Antivirus as the top performer, finding it to be the most innovative product and providing the strongest security for companies wanting to protect their corporate networks. The comparative review also included McAfee Total Virus Defence Suite, Norton Corporate Edition and F-Secure Antivirus.
According to InfoWorld's reviewer, Mandy Andress, Sophos Antivirus "boasts an excellent scanning engine, thanks largely to its InterCheck technology, which helps the Sophos client run full system scans with almost no discernible impact on system performance. In our tests, we were able to run virus scans and simultaneously access applications and perform regular user functions with no delay."
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