Sophos today announced that Sophos Email is now available in its cloud-based Sophos Central management platform. Customers and partners can now manage their email protection solution alongside Sophos endpoint, mobile, web and wireless security products from a unified, simple to use console. Sophos Email boosts security for cloud-based business email applications from leading providers, including Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Exchange 2013 and Google Apps for Work.

According to a recent survey conducted by Sophos, businesses are shifting to cloud-based email for both infrastructure and security services, with 38% using it as their primary email platform and 43% using a cloud-based service for email security. The most popular cloud-based service is Office 365, but security is a major concern for these users with 50% agreeing that third party security solutions are essential to extend Office 365 security. Ransomware, malicious attachments, malicious URLs, viruses and phishing were considered the top five threats with more than 50 percent of all respondents being very concerned about these. Yet despite this recognition of email-borne threats, more than a quarter of respondents admit that they rarely or never review their email security policy to make sure it remains effective.

“Email is still the delivery mechanism of choice for cybercriminals targeting businesses with all types of threats. We hear that phishing, ransomware and even spam are regularly getting past the protection built into the popular cloud email services” said Bryan Barney, senior vice president and general manager of the Network Security Group at Sophos. “Channel partners and IT departments need specialised security solutions as they fear email system vendors are unable to keep up with the dynamic threat landscape. Security provided within cloud-based email packages is just not enough for businesses who have a genuine challenge in preventing malicious and suspicious email content from entering their network.”

Sophos Email is a cloud-based secure email gateway that has been purpose built to boost and simplify email security for businesses. It incorporates the award-winning Sophos threat protection engine and additional advanced email-specific protection technologies, such as aggressive context-specific heuristics (CXMail) built and maintained by SophosLabs.  The CXMail family of detection strategies are purposefully designed to stop threats like ransomware that are predominately distributed using email.  The addition of the secure email gateway to Sophos Central integrates technology from Reflexion Networks, which Sophos acquired in June 2015.

“Office 365 is extremely popular as an email solution with our customers,” commented Shawn Mendel, director of Engineering Services, Earthbend and a Sophos partner. “However, after it has been deployed we are often contacted by admins who are not convinced that the built-in protection is enough to prevent today’s persistent attacks. The capability of Sophos Email to protect against ransomware is critical. Despite regular training, employees still click on emails and become phishing victims. The cloud-based management dashboard will enable my team to quickly and easily configure settings and add accounts as customers require. ”

Sophos Email is managed from Sophos Central where the dashboard allows partners and managed service providers (MSPs) to control and configure settings, distribute licenses, add new customers and track real-time view into all customer activity. The single pane of glass dashboard shows all Sophos Central services customers subscribe to, making cross and upsell opportunities more clear to help partners drive recurring revenue.

Sophos sells exclusively through its channel of more than 20 000 resellers worldwide and is dedicated to the growth and success of those partners. As part of the Sophos “channel first, channel only” business strategy, the company offers sales and technical training, certification programs, co-branded marketing assets, 24/7 support and in-depth Sophos Central partner dashboard training to help build the skills and expertise of its partners worldwide.