Sophos Email Advanced

Sophos makes security simple with innovative, intuitive and highly-effective solutions with predictive cloud email security powered by artificial intelligence. Sophos Central is a single, integrated, cloud-based management platform with synchronized security, making it more coordinated than attacks to deliver unparalleled protection at reduced costs. It protects organizations by blocking malicious emails, links and attachments from unknowingly sending outbound spam and phishing emails. It also protects employees from visiting malicious websites via email links by educating them around the risks of cyberattacks. 

In addition to keeping inboxes from being compromised, the solution uses a layered defense backed by Sophos Labs latest threat intelligence, phishing simulations, directional quarantines, and training to help identify at-risk users.

Inbound messages are passed through filters to block 90 percent of spam at the door with reputation checks, sender authentication, header anomalies, anti-spam/virus defenses and a delay queue. To protect against advanced persistent threats (APTs), it offers a time-of-click URL protection and a cloud sandbox (Sophos Sandstorm). Email continuity is granted with automated alerts, email queuing, and an emergency inbox. Information is protected with bidirectional message filtering of file types and keywords, email subject lines, message content and file names to prevent data loss. Hidden malware is detected and prevented from making its way to the end user. All these protective measures follow the theme of simplicity. 

Setup is straight forward with verifying domains and synchronizing users, and where most of the time is spent, at least initially. Base policies are offered but custom policies may also be created. Majority of their customers are going to use default settings, so these have been optimized for security.

Time-of-click URL protection was added last year. It essentially wraps the link, redirecting it to Sophos to scan against their reputation checker. It will then be passed back to the customers, allowing them to decide what action to take. Settings can be configured to block users from accessing sites, warn them and give an option to proceed, or allow the user to access sites without any restriction. URL reputations are classified as low, medium or high risk. Actions can be set to automatically occur based on reputation level. 

Sandstorm can be integrated with Sophos Endpoint to automatically detect and clean up compromised accounts. When an alert is triggered, it will kick off an endpoint scan and shut down the user account responsible for sending spam. This along with at-risk user reports create actionable information and a campaign that will automatically pull in the high-risk users and teach them not to click on links within messages. Messages are run in an isolated, virtual environment before delivery.

All reporting is available from the email gateway. Users can search and drill down into each and see more detail. These reports include a message summary of all emails, Sandstorm activity summary, time-of-click activity summaries, and an at-risk user summary of those who have initiated time-of-click URL protection most frequently. Sophos Advanced Email pricing is user based and priced per year. Discounts for multi-year commitments are offered. 24/7 support is included. Prices begin at $33.21 per user for a 36-month term.