Sophos Home Premium has one of the shortest feature lists in the antivirus world, but poke around in the web-based Settings menus for a while and you'll find one unusual extra: a simple parental controls-like content filtering system.ĭon't get excited – it's extremely basic. Just keep in mind that if they install and use an unsupported browser, such as Brave, they won't be restricted at all. Of course, if you're looking to impose restrictions on someone else – maybe your kids or employees, for example – making it more difficult to get around this web protection could be a real plus. Not difficult, at all, but it could still be a hassle if it happens regularly. To get around the block you must open the Sophos Home Premium console, click Settings > Web and enter the URL or domain you'd like to whitelist. The app didn't falsely flag any websites during testing, but if that happens to you, there's no 'let me in anyway' button or other quick way to bypass Sophos and load the page. We tried to visit some up-to-date malicious links provided by top security company MRG Effitas and Sophos caught them all, raising desktop notifications to highlight the problem. That's great, but beware, it only works with the most common browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, Internet Explorer.) Sophos Home Premium includes a simple web protection layer which aims to keep you safe from dangerous websites.

(Image credit: Sophos) Blocking malicious URLs There's not a lot of data to go on, though, and we would like to see Sophos Home covered at AV-Comparatives and AV-Test to get a clearer idea of how it compares to the competition. Sophos clearly performs well in some areas, then, not so much in others. (Some antivirus only realize there's a threat after it begins encrypting files, many never detect it at all.) And Sophos' detection is so good that even our custom ransomware was blocked before it could touch our test documents. The engine did immediately detect and quarantine any malicious files, though. Trend Micro was much tougher on our apps, spotting their unusual actions and closing them down immediately, and Bitdefender and Kaspersky weren't far behind. Sophos Home Premium seemed unconcerned about most of this, ignoring the behavior and allowing our executables to keep running. These started with behavioral monitoring checks, where custom executables exploit common Windows tools and tricks to weaken security settings and download malicious files. But the other settings won't make much difference to anyone, and overall, the package is still distinctly short on genuinely useful settings and tweaks. It's good to see that Sophos Home Premium has at least some configuration options, and the ability to schedule scans and exclude particular objects is helpful. But as almost all of these settings are highly technical, and turned on by default, they're unlikely to help most users.įor example, even if you know that the 'APC violation' switch aims to 'prevent attacks from using Application Procedure Calls (APC) to run their code', would you be confident enough to know when it should be turned off, and what the consequences might be? (It's okay, we're not even slightly qualified to decide that, either.) These lists are interesting, and it's good to see Sophos covering so many common attack vectors. There's specific exploit protection for browsers, browser plugins, Java and more prevention of privilege escalation, code cave utilization and APC violations and further layers to fool sandbox-aware malware, prevent backdoor traffic, protect against DLL hijacking, and more. The Sophos Settings pages open at the Protection tab, where there are tools to schedule scans and exclude particular drives, files and folders from checks.Īdvanced options include the ability to enable or disable multiple techniques used by Sophos to block common exploits. If there's a problem, they can contact you, and you're able to log on and make whatever tweaks you need within a couple of minutes. If your family aren't technical types, for instance, you don't have to worry about them messing with low-level antivirus settings, because the client doesn't have any. This kind of central management is also good news if you're intending to use Sophos' remote device management features.

But once you're logged in, it doesn't take any more time, and it does at least mean the support pages are only a click or two away, if you need them. If you're thinking this is a little inconvenient, we agree. Log in and you can then begin configuring the program. Tap the Settings button, for instance, and a browser tab opens at the Sophos website. Sophos Home does have some security options and settings, but they're only available via a web interface.

Sophos home premium review 2019