Sophos combines NAC with endpoint security in free upgrade

By Janine de Blois

Endpoint Security and Control 8.0., released Tuesday, integrates anti-virus, anti-spyware, host intrusion prevention, application control, firewall and NAC to block viruses and spyware as well as ensure that computers are running authorised up-to-date software and adhere to company policies. Sophos research indicates two out of three corporate computers have out of date anti-virus, missing security patches or a disabled firewall.

“Historically it’s been difficult for IT managers to know whether their users’ computers are safe, protected and compliant with corporate policies. NAC has been touted as the answer to this problem, but has often been beyond the reach of most companies in terms of budget and resource,” said John Shaw, director, endpoint security and control, Sophos. A March 2007 survey from Forrester Research indicated about forty percent of companies surveyed had tried to install NAC, but only four percent had completed the process; The rest sited excessive complexity of network based models as the reason for not implementing NAC.

Designed for simple operation, Endpoint Security and Control 8.0 is able to identify managed, unmanaged and guest computers (including desktops, laptops, file servers and mobile devices) that do not comply with corporate security policies. Security can be set to automatically fix vulnerabilities before allowing network access or to simply deny access to computers that do not comply.