Sophos Home Premium Review. When maximum safety goes hand in hand with convenience, an excellent product is born. Today we tell you all the facets of the award-winning Sophos antivirus
A warm welcome to the readers of techgameworld.com. In this article we will explore the award-winning antivirus of the US based Abingdon, we are obviously talking about Sophos.
I wrote award-winning, since theexperience matured of this company is rooted in the past. Suffice it to say that the first versions of this antivirus were produced around the nineties, coming even earlier, around the eighties, from experiences made with software intended for encryption for business use. But soon the antivirus of the American company spreads so much that it becomes one of the giants in this sector.
Sophos Home Premium Review: A First Look at the Product
Sophos, is a company that pays a lot of attention to the companies that have an interest in keep their infrastructures safe. We see this with the solutions they propose regarding, for example, the Endpoint Protection with artificial intelligence, Firewall smart, protection Cloud, up to gmanagement and protection of servers. Many cutting-edge and advanced solutions, which have earned him countless awards and certificates in terms of performance and safety level.
This experience, built and consolidated in the field business, which meant that the solutions intended for the private sector matured up to the versions we know today. Solutions ranging from protection of our smartphones, all mail, and the classic system of antivirus for our PCs.
Sohpos’s motto is clear and direct “Security made simple“, it will be like this? And what we will try to find out in the review of the most complete and private version, Sophos Home Premium. A system able to protect us not only from viruses, but also from attempts to violate privacy, while browsing the web, and from the much feared Ransomware.
Sophos Home Premium Review: Performance Analysis
We are talking about an antivirus, and what primarily interests the user is certainly the security side, that is how much it is actually able to guarantee protection to the devices in our possession. Precisely for this reason I want to start from the tests, so as to have a clear reference of the product.
Sophos, as mentioned, has achieved numerous successes over the years, especially in the business field, where it is now a certainty. But in the consumer field? Let’s take a look at the data.
There are several companies that test and evaluate the vast majority of antivirus on the market: every month of every single year. Periodically Sophos has always achieved great results, placing itself in the front rows. Results that definitely make the difference when a user finds himself having to choose his own antivirus in a huge market.
Therefore, reporting the tests performed by some of the main companies aimed at test of antispyware, starting from AV TEST, independent company, which tests security software with a large database, and based on three aspects: Protection, Performance e Usability.
Sophos history is a certainty, always receiving promotion certificates. The tests carried out during the 2020 by AV-TEST mark the software as TOP Product. Among the best out of 35 tested antispyware, it boasts a constancy over time that certainly gives the user safety.
The Sophos engine tested in particular in the Security test achieved a score of 6.0 to 6.0, with a protection equal to 98.9% in the simulated name test “Real-World”. A test that simulates precisely a condition of use exposed to various threats. The test includes a database of 370 samples including viruses, malicious websites, malware attacks and infected emails, and well the 100% of the detection of malicious infections in the PC have been detected. On the front of the Performance, gets a high score of 5.5 its 6.0 resulting not very invasive on the final performance of the machine, both modern and dated.
Finally we have the inherent value ofUsability, where it once again gets a score of 6.0 to 6.0, this means that it does not impact negatively in daily use: therefore with false positives, or detections of harmful websites, due to errors given by incorrect detections.
Referring instead to another leading company in this field, let’s talk about AV-Comparatives, always in the Real-World test (with its AV-C database), it performed very well, obtaining several first places in all the tests performed, obtaining the Advanced Protection certificate.
The independent American company also gives the highest quality certificate to the software Selabs, which has made Sophos one of the most reliable on the market.
Regarding our experience gained in these weeks of testing, we can certainly confirm the goodness of the software. The antivirus in question it has never impacted on the performance of the machine, which remained unchanged, limiting the saturation of background resources.
The installation phase
The installation phase it is really very simple and intuitive.
Just go to the official site, register by creating an account, and then the download of the installation file will start.
Once the installation has started, you will have to wait about 6 minutes. As soon as the latter Sophos is finished will immediately start a scan of your PC looking for viruses and problems, and subsequently a thorough cleaning of temporary files, or in any case deemed useless
Deep scan, time in my case about 10 minutes.
Sophos Home Premium Review: A simple interface suitable for everyone
What immediately catches the eye is the ease of use. L’interface is reduced to the bare minimum, putting all the necessary operations on the intelligent analysis engine, including the management of settings. A software that therefore it fits perfectly for those not accustomed to in this world.
The interface shows up with 6 sections left, and its display on the right. With a clearly visible and isolated key that indicates the scan. Also the only scan present that we will be able to take advantage of, as the philosophy of this Sophos Home Premium is precisely to make use as always and intuitive as possible.
We will therefore not have the customization of the analysis including: Advanced Scan, Media Scan etc., but we will have only one, managed independently by the intelligent engine.
The scan will therefore be advanced, and will detect any anomalies by itself, independently deciding whether to perform a deep or milder cleaning. The duration of the same will depend on the files to be analyzed, and on any anomalies.
The second and only other scan available is that individual files. Which is accessible via the simple right button of the mouse, on the file that we are interested in analyzing in particular.
The first thing you notice is that none of the options on the main page can be accessed directly from the software, as for the touch of these sections, the user will be automatically redirected to the website.
In fact, everything will be managed by the dedicated site, in particular in the section of our profile. A choice that is aimed at making the use of antivirus less difficult, everything will then be managed automatically on the PC, subject to customizations that the user will want to make, precisely online. But be careful, because in order to access these configurations on the site, you will necessarily need a connection.
The software is presented divided into categories, five to be exact. The first is called Status, and it will show you the active protections in real time on the antivirus, and a report of all the main events. The second category History and, as the name suggests, it is an in-depth section of all events, including scans performed in the past.
The sections that deal with settings start with the next category, that is Protection. In this category they are present 4 sub categories, with very intuitive and easy to interpret settings. The first sub-category is called General, we will be able to act; activating / deactivating the real-time protection, activating / deactivating the protection against any unsafe server connections, activating / deactivating the Machine Learning for intelligent scanning of the PC independently, which we advise you to always keep active. We can then schedule the scans, or insert exceptions that will not be considered for future scans.
Continuing, the section Exploits will allow you to configure individual protocols regarding network protocols via options Exploit Mitigation (we advise you to leave everything active). Risk Reduction instead it is an interesting section that will allow you to access various options that we advise you to always leave active, as regards the 360 degree protection both on the web and offline, such as protection from Pendrive USB infette. Protected Applications instead it will allow you to apply an advanced control in real time during operation, on certain software installed on the PC.
The other sub-category is Ramsonware, where we will simply have the ability to activate / deactivate the protections for this threat. And the last sub-category is instead Web, where we can activate / deactivate navigation protection in real time, deactivate the blocking of downloads on file reputation. The settings in this sub-category continue with the theft protection regarding bank login credentials, and the ability to insert exceptions to disable web protection for certain sites.
Moving on, the fourth main category is Web Filtering, in this section we will be able to insert a myriad of blocks for certain categories of websites considered potentially threatening, for example pornographic, violent, content relating to drugs, containing images or offensive actions.
A function that, especially for parents, can be really useful.
The last section is that relating to Privacy, where you can activate or not the device activation protections on the PC without user control or by external software, for example notifications relating to the switching on of our webcam.
The only two options present offline directly on the software are the following;
Conclusion and price
Having come to the conclusion of this review, we were positively impressed with this antivirus. Summing it all up Sophos Home Premium has a mission, to have one big ease of use, combined witheffectiveness of protection both while browsing the web and during offline use. What the premium membership offers is very important to us and is definitely worth the purchase. Especially for the really Premium support of the offer, which makes the Sophos team available for any problems with the machine.
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