Sophos in the news: Cyberoam, SafeGuard, Snapchat and Flappy Bird

Sophos-in-the-newsThis was a really big week for Sophos, with so much positive media coverage of our acquisition of leading UTM company Cyberoam Technologies, and the launch of the latest and greatest version of our encryption solution SafeGuard Enterprise.

Our experts from SophosLabs and Naked Security also made headlines this week with head-of-the-pack security research, particularly our discovery of malware-carrying versions of the insanely popular Flappy Bird game. Here are some of the highlights from media coverage of Sophos this week.

Sophos acquires Cyberoam

Our acquisition of Cyberoam generated a lot of buzz in the trade press covering security and the IT channel. At ITBusinessEdge.com, blogger Mike Vizard observes that the acquisition shows that “acceptance of UTM appliances has gained momentum,” especially in the mid-market.

At Channelnomics, reporter Larry Walsh wrote that the deal is a “major leap forward” for Sophos. According to Walsh, our expanding network security portfolio “is drawing distinct separation from other security software vendors.”

For Sophos and Cyberoam partners, it’s “business as usual, but for the better,” Cyberoam CEO Hemal Patel said in an interview with CRN.

SafeGuard Enterprise 6.1 launches

After launching the new SafeGuard Enterprise with a big splash at our Abingdon headquarters, media reports noted that our encryption solution now protects data everywhere, including on Macs, mobile devices, and in the cloud.

Marty Ward, vice president of product marketing for Sophos, explained in an interview with ITBusiness.ca that SafeGuard Enterprise offers data encryption without compromising performance. And using SafeGuard to manage all your encryption from a single console is a “big deal” from a usability perspective as well.

“If you use one platform to manage the encryption, you have control over the keys from beginning to end,” Marty says. “From the user perspective, you don’t have to worry about it at all, you just share data however you want.”

Flipping for Flappy Bird

After the developer of the highly-addictive game Flappy Bird pulled the app from the Apple and Google stores last week, one of our researchers, Andras Mendik of SophosLabs in Sydney, discovered malicious Android versions cropping up in third-party stores that turned out to harbor malware.

As CNET reported, the meteoric rise and fall of Flappy Bird created just the sort of attention malware creators take advantage of to lure users and infect their devices. Our experts have some simple advice about downloading unofficial apps and games from third-party app stores: don’t.

Another Snapchat hack

The folks at the popular photo and video messaging service Snapchat haven’t been winning too many fans in the security industry, particularly after they ignored warnings from researchers about a security hole that was exploited to expose millions of usernames and phone numbers back in December.

This week, Snapchat users were inundated with photo messages that turned out to be nothing more than ads for a website offering recipes for smoothies.

Chester Wisniewski, senior security advisor at Sophos, said in an interview with TopTechNews.com that the latest hack shouldn’t surprise anyone, given that Snapchat’s attitude toward security seems to be “more reactive than proactive.”

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