Sophos Central Cybersecurity - Secure Workloads, Data, Apps, and Access

My main use case for Sophos Central  is to help protect our endpoints, especially as we have different team members across different countries. We have team members in Africa, and we have team members in the UK. In Africa, we have team members in Lagos, Nigeria, Uganda, South Africa, and Kenya because these are where our markets are. This helps us protect our endpoints, especially as these team members have their work to do.

Regarding how I use Sophos Central  day-to-day, it helps with malware detection. Each day, I can come to the dashboard and see threats and alerts. I can see the compromised level and the level of threats, whether they are high, medium, or low, and then I take the necessary action. Sophos has been especially helpful for malware on endpoints. I have not had any cause for concern, especially regarding malware attacks.

Sophos Central has been really helpful over time. A specific example of how it has helped me is that there have been cases where a particular team member tried to install software from a compromised site. Sophos immediately sends a high alert to my email, mentioning that this particular user with this particular device is trying to download software from a particular compromised website. The software will not allow the person to download it, and I can reach out to the person to inform them that I can see they are trying to download this and ask them to stop downloading it.

I think the best features Sophos Central offers are the parts where users cannot uninstall Sophos themselves unless they reach out to me as the IT administrator. I appreciate this because ordinarily a user could decide to do something, uninstall the software, do whatever they want to do, and come back and install the software again. However, that is not the case for Sophos Central. Before you can uninstall Sophos Central, you have to reach out to the IT administrator. This is a very good feature.

This aspect impacts my daily work positively because it has helped prevent issues with users trying to bypass security. It has helped in many ways, especially when a user wants to view inappropriate content on their work device. Sophos immediately sends a high alert and will not even allow the user to open the site. This is helpful because I do not know what could have come into the work device by visiting those sites. It is something I have enjoyed personally.

Another feature I appreciate is the email alerts. When Sophos sends an email alert to me, I can easily see that something is going on and needs my attention, and I can immediately take action. This helps with monitoring, especially regarding security. When anything is flagged, I immediately log on to Sophos Central and take action.

I have noticed pain points around installation. Whenever I want to install on devices that are Windows, it is usually a lot of hassle because it is very easy to install on a MacBook. However, when a user is using Windows, installing Sophos Central on Windows is usually a serious undertaking. I think they can improve on that. Additionally, the installation takes a really long time for Sophos Central. While that might be fine if it is doing its job, for Windows it is really quite a lot when you are installing for a particular person.

Regarding needed improvements, I would suggest something. Zoho has this ManageEngine feature where users can actually turn off a device from the administrator end. I think if Sophos Central could integrate that in their system, whereby when there is a high alert, I as an IT administrator can easily go there and click on something to turn off the user's work device, I think that would be something I would love to have. That is a feature I would appreciate.

I believe if Sophos Central could have something like remote desktop access, similar to Zoho ManageEngine, where when a particular device is attacked, you can toggle off the device from your end or maybe access the device remotely and render it non-functional, that is something I would appreciate seeing on Sophos Central in the future.

I have been using Sophos Central for about a year.

Sophos Central is stable for us. Sophos Central has been stable for our organization.

Regarding Sophos Central's scalability, I think it can handle our organization's growth and more users if needed. When the team starts increasing in number, you only need to procure more licenses. I know of bigger startups that are using Sophos Central today. Our team is less than fifty people, so I think it can definitely handle scalability.

We have been contacting our third-party vendor's customer support, and they have been very responsive. Recently, they mentioned an upgrade plan for Sophos Central. We have not explored it yet, but it is something we might be willing to explore in the near future. Their customer support has been wonderful. I would give the customer support a ten out of ten. They have been excellent. In fact, there are times when they would visit us in the office to help with any technicalities. So they have been good.

We have not been using a different solution before Sophos Central.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Sophos Central shows that it is expensive. However, when you look at it holistically, I think it is still fair. We got licenses at first for fifteen team members, and that was about 1.8 million Naira. We then got additional licenses for ten more team members, which brought us to twenty-five team members, and that was about 1.3 million Naira as well. The pricing is not cheap, especially for a startup like ours. However, I think that for the cost-saving, especially around security, the value as against the cost is fair. I think the value outweighs the cost.

We have been getting the license from a third party called Aricent Solution in Lagos State. For the solution itself and for the deployment, it is on a private cloud with the third-party vendor.

There is a return on investment with Sophos Central. I cannot say exactly how much time is saved, but time is definitely saved because you are assured that you do not have to worry about checking for security. We have been worried about cyber theft and cyber attacks. For fewer employees, in fact, we have not had cause to employ any cyber analyst. We did not even employ any cybersecurity analyst. That is actually saving us the overhead cost of having that additional employment.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Sophos Central shows that it is expensive. However, when you look at it holistically, I think it is still fair. We got licenses at first for fifteen team members, and that was about 1.8 million Naira. We then got additional licenses for ten more team members, which brought us to twenty-five team members, and that was about 1.3 million Naira as well. The pricing is not cheap, especially for a startup like ours. However, I think that for the cost-saving, especially around security, the value as against the cost is fair. I think the value outweighs the cost.

Before choosing Sophos Central, we wanted to pursue ISO 27001 certification at that time, and that was when they told us that we needed to start using a security software.

My advice for others looking into using Sophos Central is that if you are a startup and you do not have the cost to build a cybersecurity team, I think Sophos Central is your best option. Having a dashboard where you can actually see every possible attack, threat, attempt, or malware attempt on the devices of your team members basically solves your security issue. I would rate this review a nine out of ten.