Stuart Fisher, Regional VP and MD, Asia Pacific, Sophos, noted that point solutions, multiple vendors and multiple products all add complexity to managing security. Sophos is proposing an end-to-end security platform targeted at the mid-market*, where there is "the least amount of expertise and support, but the most activity", he said, listing pressures around privacy, legislation, government controls and what needs to be put in place and the decentralised nature of such companies as challenges they face.
There is definitely a case of consolidating the various layers of protection available today and managing them as a whole. Solutions for policy enforcement, threat prevention, compromise or intrusion detection and threat response are sold independently, and when something happens for one solution, the others work independently, and so cannot take advantage of the information. Galileo recognises that all aspects of cybersecurity should all be part of a unified effort to protect users and data, noted author Maxim Weinstein in the blog post.
Among the anticipated benefits from Project Galileo will be better endpoint protection against malware, data loss and advanced persistent threats (APTs), managed via with user-based policies in the Sophos Cloud, as well as more effective unified threat management (UTM) and next generation firewall (NGFW) technology, all of which will work seamlessly together.
In a recent visit to Singapore, Gerhard Eschelbeck, Chief Technology Officer, Sophos, said that the company is focusing on simplifying the current layers of security that all businesses are struggling with. "Security must be comprehensive and simple. It is more effective in a system," he said.
Project Galileo will provide more context awareness for Sophos technology and ensure that the technology integrates closely together, Eschelbeck said. "The solutions will make much better decisions in real time. It is true data integrity," he said.
Eschelback described Project Galileo as being about 4D security, or security that is able to track what happens over time. An example of this could be a trojan installing itself onto a network and only activating months later - the technologies in Project Galileo would be able to link an attack back to that trojan and theoretically protect the system much better in future. Project Gailieo will yield "a set of features and functionality over the next 18 months that we will integrate into products," he said. "There is no perfect security, but we're getting very close to the 100%."
Project Galileo concepts are colouring the Sophos roadmap already. A unified threat management solution, UTM Advantage 9.3, is currently in beta and expected to launch before the end of the year, will provide protection for everything from Wi-Fi to the cloud. Its new SG appliance series makes use of UTM Advantage 9.2 and is likely to take advantage of version 9.3 when it is out.
Acquisitions are also fodder for Sophos' vision of an integrated security platform via Project Galileo. The acquisition of Mojave Networks, announced October 7, will lead to Mojave's cloud protection technology being folded into the Sophos Cloud product line in early 2015 and then later in 2015 into the appliance-based network security solutions, Sophos has stated. Cyberoam Technologies, acquired in February, will see its UTM, NGFW and network security expertise appear in integrated security devices in the earlier part of next year in the NGFW space, Eschelback shared.
Eschelback also noted that cloud and mobile may be what requires protection today, but that the Internet of Things is the next security frontier to tackle. "This is the age of targeted malware, targeting specific countries, businesses or organisations. In the next couple of years the targeted nature will stay, and additional devices such as those on Android will be a target. Android will be the operating system of choice for Internet of Things, so will need to be secured," Eschelback said.
*Sophos defines the mid-market as companies which have 100 to 1,000 staff.
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