New partner programme combines Cyberoam, Sophos

Sophos, a global vendor in network and endpoint security announced a new partner programme for resellers in Africa and Middle East, to help channel partners achieve their growth objectives with competitive margins, dedicated marketing and sales support, deal registration protection, sales tools, training and certification and other programs.

The core objective of the Sophos partner programme is to equip partners with resources and training that enable them to sell, market, distribute and implement the company’s cloud, network, server and end-user protection solutions for organisations.

The new Sophos partner programme provides access to the company’s portfolio of endpoint and network security products, which have been engineered keeping partners in mind. Partners are now able to manage all Sophos solutions for every customer through a centralised management platform, Sophos Central.

Within Sophos Central is Sophos Central-Partner, a specialised dashboard that allows partners to distribute licenses, add new customers on demand, cross and upsell services, drive recurring revenue and have a clear, real-time perspective on all customer activity. Partners can respond to security incidents faster and track alerts of all levels directly from the dashboard, so time spent handling incidents, including minor ones, is more productive and effective.

The Sophos Central Partner dashboard integrates with Professional Service Automation software, and partners can tie-in and customise Remote Monitoring and Management software from leading vendors to deploy and update Sophos agents locally. This unlocks new avenues for all partners, Cyberoam and Sophos, to start selling a portfolio of IT security products allowing partners to deliver synchronised security solution to their customers.

This partner programme actively reflects Sophos’s commitment to help partners sell next-generation IT security technology to address sophisticated threats. Partners have a great opportunity to grow their business by making the most of the demand for advanced IT security solutions and also exploring the clear upsell and cross-sell opportunities within existing customers.

Sophos Partner Programme for Middle East and Africa

The new partner programme consists of four levels

• Authorised Entry Level
• Silver Level
• Gold Level
• Platinum Level

This is based on sales performance. Each level increases in commitment to selling Sophos products and value delivered to customers.

The programme includes offerings such as:

• Deal registration and discount structure

Partners can either interact with Sophos directly or use the Partner Portal to do so, which offers a set of tools to simplify deal registration and get pricing.

• Product and solutions portfolio

Partners have access to Sophos’s network, server and end user protection solutions, including Sophos Cloud.

• Sales and marketing tools

Partners can benefit from partner programme, with dedicated support, deal registration protection and competitive margins.

• Training and certification

Helps partners increase the skill and competency of their sales and technical professionals.

In July 2016, Sophos announced Sophos SafeGuard Encryption 8, a new synchronised encryption solution that protects data against theft from malware, attackers or accidental leaks. All organisations can now choose to adopt the best practice of always-on file-level encryption to protect data accessed from mobile devices, laptops, desktops, on-premise networks and cloud-based file sharing applications.

Until now, management and adoption of encryption has been viewed as too complex and is not uniformly adopted. According to the Sophos survey, The State of Encryption Today, only 29% of IT managers said they always encrypt smartphones and only 43% of Macs, leaving high levels of exposure across an organisation.

Full disk encryption alone only protects data in the event of the theft or loss of a laptop or mobile device. But data travels everywhere, it is vulnerable and extremely difficult to protect consistently when shared and opened from multiple devices and cloud-based collaboration applications.

Sophos has re-imagined SafeGuardEncryption 8 to encrypt each individual file by default and continuously validate users, applications and devices for secure collaboration. It also provides password protected files, allowing users to share encrypted files with external recipients. When data security is simple and transparent, end users are more likely to accept it, making your whole business more secure and more likely to stay compliant.

Comprehensive, manageable encryption should be high on the agenda for all IT leaders as they reassess data protection strategies to meet new legislation requirements. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation comes into effect on May 25, 2018, when all companies holding customer or employee data of EU citizens will face severe financial penalties of up to 4% of annual worldwide revenue if they suffer a data breach. This includes companies that are not necessarily based in the EU, but hold EU citizen data.

Data privacy legislation is being introduced all over the world, and organisations of every size should review their data protection measures before they face increased consequences. Every company that conducts business in countries that have data privacy laws must comply with those local regulations.

Encryption is widely agreed to be the best security measure available. As part of Sophos synchronised security strategy, Sophos SafeGuard Encryption can respond automatically to threat incidents from connected endpoint protection. During an active infection, Sophos SafeGuard Encryption can temporarily revoke encryption keys to protect data, and users can automatically get those keys back after the incident is resolved.

Sophos SafeGuard Encryption also synchronises keys with Sophos Mobile Control, which seamlessly secures file access rights on smartphones and tablets. Even encrypted documents can be accessed securely within the application’s Secure Work Space feature.

There are four key reasons businesses need to consider encryption:

• The first and most important is protection for sensitive data against hacking and data breaches.

• The second is unintended disclosure. People leave mobile phones and USB sticks in the back of taxis and accidentally email documents to the wrong person all the time, exposing files and other private information.

• Thirdly, encryption helps companies comply with regulation such as the GDPR, mitigating potentially huge fines.

• Lastly, the migration to cloud-based services presents a security issue, and encryption can help companies protect data that may be vulnerable.

In order for encryption to be effective in these four scenarios, it has to be easy for an IT administrator to manage, transparent to users and work with multiple platforms and file types. Sophos does all of this within SafeGuard Encryption, allowing companies to quickly adopt encryption as a necessary security measure.

In May 2016, Sophos launched Sophos Clean, the latest addition to its Enduser protection portfolio of advanced malware detection, remediation and removal software. The signature-less technology uses progressive behavior analytics, forensics and collective intelligence to discover and remove code from zero-day threats, Trojans, root kits, polymorphic malware, irritating cookies, spyware and adware.

Built on technology acquired from SurfRight BV in December 2015, Sophos Clean represents the next generation of malware detection and removal tools that can detect known and unknown threats. The on-demand scan does not need to be installed, which is particularly useful in cases of ransomware infection or in situations where malware is manipulating installed security software.

The need for next-generation endpoint protection that does not rely on signatures is long established. Zero-day threats and some ransomware like Cryptolocker can only be detected by integrated capabilities of exploit prevention, behavior analytics and pre-execution heuristics built into endpoint protection software.

Sophos Clean can complement any installed anti-malware software by providing a second opinion on suspected files. With a minimal footprint and fast scan, Sophos Clean will quickly identify and remove all residual traces of malware.

Resilient malware attacks critical system files or boot records to manipulate Windows and antivirus software – even before the operating system boots. Sophos Clean can remove persistent threats from within the operating system and replaces infected Windows resources with safe original versions. Reinfection attempts are proactively blocked until threat remediation has finished.

Malware today is persistent by design, difficult to detect, difficult to remove and difficult to recover from. Sophos researchers are seeing increasing sophistication of malware, both the techniques being used and the heavy use of automation. Polymorphism is becoming the norm, and previously unknown malware is on the rise. These attacks, once active on your system, embed themselves deeply using multiple techniques to ensure long term persistence. Using the latest removal technology, Sophos Clean is able to remove all fragments of a malware infection and return the system to a pristine state.