Sophos Increases Security Support for VMware Environments

LAS VEGAS, NV--(Marketwire - Aug 29, 2011) - Today at VMworld® 2011, global IT security and data protection company Sophos announced a strengthening of its Elite-level partnership with VMware by supporting VMware vShield Endpoint™. Sophos will demonstrate the VMware vShield Endpoint prototype as part of its wider virtualization security solution strategy at this week's VMworld 2011.

When organizations deploy virtualization, security is not always top of mind, and security software that is not virtualization-aware can lead to performance problems. Striking a balance between gaining maximum performance and protecting against malware is essential, which is why the Sophos virtualization intelligent endpoint security solution minimizes physical footprint on each virtual machine by utilizing VMware memory sharing and the ability to stagger scans. In order to optimize virtualization in the future, the company has developed a working prototype using VMware vShield Endpoint, and will deliver support for vShield 5 in a forthcoming version of Sophos Endpoint Security suite. VMware vShield Endpoint allows anti-virus scanning to be offloaded from each virtual machine to a dedicated scanner.

"We understand the challenges that companies face in protecting themselves against malware and data loss, while not impacting the performance and cost benefits of virtualization," said Shaun Paice, vice president of Endpoint product management, Sophos. "Sophos offers the broadest platform support covering physical and virtual environments to ensure there is no negative impact on either a user's ability to work or to cost savings. Our partnership with VMware allows us to support the development of VMware vShield™ Endpoint in order to deliver optimized performance for virtual environments."

"As customers continue on their virtualization and cloud computing journey, we are committed to ensuring they have an improved security model available, specifically designed to overcome the challenges associated with these dynamic environments," said Parag Patel, Vice President, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware. "We are collaborating with Sophos to enable customers to be protected from today's growing number of complex security threats without disturbing their virtual and cloud environments."

In related news, Sophos has achieved VMware Ready™ status for its Virtual Email Appliance. The designation indicates that this appliance has passed a detailed evaluation and testing process managed by VMware.

Visit Sophos at VMworld 2011 in the New Innovators Pavilion at stand number 171-U. For additional information on Sophos' virtualization products, visit www.sophos.com/virtualization.

About Sophos
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, mobile and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs -- a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.

Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.

VMware, VMware vShield, VMware vShield Endpoint and VMworld are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. The use of the word "partner" or "partnership" does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.