Earlier deployments were on-premises, but we have worked on the on-cloud and on-prem setup phases wherein the use cases were about protecting all the endpoints as there was a, you know, increase in the remote work-from-home and office happenings. There was a requirement for a customer to track the endpoints as well and not give them access to pen drives or any other things as it was an office setup or office assets. So that's the kind of policy I have created. Also, use cases included in a way, like, some URLs had to be blocked, certain URLs should not work while ensuring that applications are secure. So, whatever applications an IT administrator is providing, we have to give access to the applications. There was one of the use cases wherein some users were trying to do a POC on simulators, where the attack would be generated in certain machines, and how Sophos is trying to protect that. So, they wanted to see that. So that was also being evaluated from my end. Sophos proved around seventy percent protection score, while the other antivirus solutions were not able to do that. With the value added by Sophos, we can say that Sophos is very big in terms of endpoints.
It has web gateway protection. It can filter out at the granular level for the URL filtering and everything. So it can also give you all the detailed reporting wherein what file has been executed. Also, it has a lightweight agent wherein it has a huge database where it is constantly upgrading. Based on that, it becomes effective in catching certain threats.
The update part is a bit tricky in the solution. Sometimes what happens is the client thinks that the agent is holding, causing the CPU or memory to spike up. So that is where the issue occurred, which was reported earlier. In short, the solution's update part's shortcoming is an area to be improved.
There should be granularity in terms of filtering. So, if you say application-based filtering, then there should be some layer-7 filtering added.
I have been using Sophos EPP Suite for five to six years.
My company is an SI for the solution. Also, I am using the solution's latest version.
The agent was creating the features. So, the memory of their laptop was spiking. In terms of the cloud, there is a bit of lag whenever we try to log in on Sophos, which is not that much, but sometimes I figure out when that is there. If you log in, you have to wait for some time until the circle spins up before setting up the dashboard. So it takes some time, even though if you apply certain policies, it takes some time to get onto the system.
If you have purchased a license for two hundred users, and then the customer says that there is a sudden increase in our recruitment after three months, because of which four hundred people have to be hired. Then, you can suggest or ask to get them to get an add-on license from Sophos. So then, they will provide a hundred users based on the remaining timelines. Like, suppose you have purchased for three years and one year has already passed for those endpoints, then you add it for two years for those hundred new users, and you'll get the licenses. So, its scalability is good.
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
One of our clients was large, with one thousand users, and others were midsized, with around three hundred to five hundred users.
The support is not that good. The support's approach needs to be changed, especially from their end, because even though you try to send a mail or you do a phone call, based on the severity, the reply never comes from their end. I mean, it takes around two minutes for a person to reply. Initially, I have only done the research and development part to resolve the issues.
I rate the support a six out of ten.
Speaking of compatibility, it is not compatible with Windows 10, which is pretty much understandable. Microsoft itself is at an end-of-life stage. So, it will not support that kind of environment, and the agent can be installed on Windows 10 or a higher version. I have faced these challenges wherein it was a legacy system of Windows 7, and the customer was trying to install it on that. After checking with the product management team of support, they mentioned it would not work.
The setup is very easy, which takes around twenty minutes to set up the cloud setup and the licensing portal. Then, if you talk about the agent, the agent will also take around twenty minutes or fifteen, or twenty minutes depending on the speed of the desktop or laptop. Regarding deployment, it takes, like, forty minutes to deploy completely. For one agent, if you wanted to install it on a large scale, then there should be involvement of the servers team which will use WSUS to import those files and try to execute with the script. So for a particular one agent or two agents, it might take around, like, half an hour, especially if you are very well versed with it and if you create certain policies. So, policy creation is also very easy. Instead of using the default policy, we can use or create our clone, basically. That is the best option where we can clone it, and we can directly get it to our set of policies.
The number of users depends on how you scale or what type of deployment is required. So if I am using only twenty-five users, which is their base bundle, that includes ten to twenty-five users, one engineer is enough for deployment and to install the agent in the machine of other users. So, it can take one or two weeks maximum for a particular engineer if they fully work for at least four to five hours a day.
As Sophos is already doing the maintenance, we have to understand where exactly the laptop is being carried from by the users, and once it is received, we already know that basic checks are to be done on those laptops. Else, you may have a solution deployed to take care of other things. So maintenance in terms of checking the policies, we have to do that, and we have to check which laptop is creating the issue from the dashboard. So, we can do that, and we can isolate that and patch it based on the requirement. If you have a thousand users or two thousand users, it is difficult for a particular user to decide how many people are required for maintenance. If you deploy it with the help of a certain engineer, initially, you might get certain threats that are bombarding the portal. But later on, you can remove those resources one by one. So, initially, you can add five people if you have a thousand users, and slowly, you can remove them later on.
Price-wise, it is cheap. We need to pay 1,500 to 2,000 INR per user. The licensing of the solution is on a yearly basis. Customers have to initially pay for the cloud portal and then for the subscription licenses.
On a scale of one to ten, where one is very cheap, and ten is very expensive, I rate the pricing a three out of ten.
I recommend the solution to those planning to use it. I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.
