Sophos is an antivirus company based in the United States and England and has been around since the 1980s.  The antivirus software is frequently used in business and educational environments.  Therefore, Sophos is often available as a free antivirus by the institution (the way I was originally able to test the antivirus).  The software is fairly basic in that it only provides virus protection.  However, Sophos does an excellent job at mitigating virus and malicious software threats.  The software also has excellent memory and CPU resource management capabilities.

Installation:

    The download file was 66 megabytes in size, which is on the smaller side for standard antivirus.  The installation had a fair amount of menus and options to configure.  A user will also need to enter in the provided username and password to download updates.  The installer also needs to first extract files to a location however, this type of installer is usually indicative of a more manual experience.  Interestingly, the installation process hasn’t changed for probably about 5 years.  The whole installation process took about 5 minutes.

Interface:

    The Sophos interface probably hasn’t changed for at least 7 years.  There are only a few icons available to click on and even fewer settings.  One pet peeve is that the tray icon doesn’t connect directly to the application.  Therefore, if a user wants to open the main antivirus program, they need to navigate through the start menu each time.  One positive functionality is the ease to setup and schedule virus scans.  Finally, it is readily apparent that Sophos Antivirus 9 is a barebones antivirus and excels at such.

Features:

    Application Control.  Sophos has an excellent HIPS or application behavior analysis.  Essentially, Sophos will analyze active processes and look for malicious behavior.  If malicious behavior is detected, the software will quarantine the suspect files.  On the test system, Sophos labeled a module for a remote access program as potentially malicious.  While, Sophos was technically wrong, it is still a reasonable response to be alerted to any remote control software installed on a computer.  Regardless, with the Application Control menu, a user can specify the remote access program as trusted and Sophos will safely ignore the program.

    Windows Account Integration.  Sophos account management requires zero configuration.  This is because Sophos integrates directly into Windows User Accounts.  For example, when an administrator logs in they will have complete access to all the settings while a lower privileged user may not even be able to open the program (as defined by the administrator).  Some of the access restrictions available are moving or deleting files from the quarantine etc.  The access controls are unlike competitor products such as Panda Antivirus, in which accounts need to be individually created and assigned privileges.

    Messaging and Email Notification.  Sophos Antivirus 9 allows a user to customize antivirus alerts.  Sophos even provides the ability to create custom messages for users when a virus is detected.  The best part about the software is the SMTP email function.  An email can be sent if a virus is found or even if suspicious behavior is detected.  This is useful for administrators who need to monitor several computers and cannot spend the time looking at individual antivirus logs.  Sophos also provides SNMP messaging capabilities for larger corporations. 

Virus Scanning and Detection:

    The Sophos antivirus engine has been certified by all major antivirus accreditation companies and carries the VB100, WestCoast Labs, and ICSA labels.  According to AV-comparatives, Sophos has moderate antivirus protection capabilities getting mostly “standard” ratings for detection against monthly viruses.  The standard ratings also represent that Sophos Antivirus 9 has below average antivirus protection.  Sophos did not detect any viruses on the test system other than the remote access software.  Unfortunately, there were not any other scan options other than “Scan my computer”.  Sophos’s On demand scanning is pathetically slow.  The scan progress had only moved to 2% after an hour of continuous virus scanning.  There was also a problem with real time detection being initially disabled.  Users will want to enable this option after a successful installation.  Sophos also provides protection for Macintosh viruses on PC’s which is an industry first. 

Resource Usage: 

    Sophos Antivirus 9 uses the least amount of computer resources of any antivirus tested on Freeantivirushelp.  The software will average between 1 and 5% CPU usage during an on demand virus scan.  Almost all other free antivirus tested on this site maintained at least 40% CPU usage during an antivirus scan.  The low CPU usage may also contribute to the relatively slow scanning.  Memory usage is on the higher end utilizing about 120 megabytes of RAM during idle operation and virus scanning.  

Conclusion:

    Sophos Antivirus 9 provides basic virus protection.  Unfortunately, I can really only see this antivirus used in a corporate or education environment because of its centrally management capabilities.  Home users will want to stick with free antivirus such as AVG or Norton.

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