Review: Sophos Security Suite SBE 2.0

Previous attempts by Sophos to address the small-business security market have not always hit the mark. Its new Security Suite Small Business Edition 2.0, however, is a real step forward, requiring far less technical expertise to deploy and manage.

It can also protect against a wider range of threats, including spyware, with an integrated Windows client firewall and application-level filtering as well desktop anti-virus protection, plus optional anti-spam and content filtering for email servers.

At the core of the Small Business Suite is the central Control Centre from which you download, deploy and manage the Sophos anti-virus and firewall clients.

On a small network this can be installed on an XP PC, but a server is strongly recommended and for our tests we used a server running Windows Server 2003. An SQL database is also required, with MSDE installed automatically as part of the short setup procedure which took less than 10 minutes on our Lan.

We then ran the new network protection wizard which takes you through the steps required to download and distribute the anti-virus and firewall client software. With recent PCs and servers (Windows 2000 or later) this can all be done from the central console. However, with older 98/NT PCs and Apple Mac systems manual installation is required.

Similarly, the firewall can only be deployed to Windows 2000/XP desktops with no support for Linux in this release either.

We also had to tweak existing XP firewall and file-sharing settings to get the automatic distribution to work, but it’s surprisingly easy and you can monitor progress throughout from the Control Centre console.

Threat management is also handled here with a threat summary dashboard plus new centralised clean-up tools in this version, which we found very easy to follow and use.

When it comes to client management, Sophos has gone for a light-touch approach, further minimising the amount of work required. Remote clients are not managed directly, but you can push out a standard configuration and a preset update schedule, force manual updates and stop local changes being made.

We also liked the ability to configure a secondary update source which, by default, is set to Sophos itself, enabling mobile workers to receive updates without the need for a VPN (virtual private network) connection.

We were also impressed by the high level of integration between the components although this doesn’t apply to the anti-spam software. Sophos Pure Message is used here, adding the ability to filter and quarantine spam and block offensive content on both Microsoft Exchange and SMTP mail servers.

This, though, needs to be installed separately and is not quite as easy to set up. It’s also managed independently via an MMC (Microsoft Management Console) plug-in, which is annoying in this otherwise well-integrated package.

On the plus side, you do get a link to the Pure Message console from the Control Centre and the need for two separate interfaces is only a minor irritation. Moreover, you don’t have to pay for the Pure Message component if it’s not needed with a separate implementation (Sophos Computer Security, starting at £192 ex Vat, for five users, for one year).

Customers with the existing Sophos Security Suite will also be pleased to learn that they can upgrade to the new version for free. Plus there’s a free 30-day trial download for others wanting to check it out for themselves.

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