Jon’s Network

I’ve been watching (and selling) Sophos for years. It has become even easier to sell in the past 12 months simply by showing CA or McAfee customers the Sophos management console. Most see pretty quickly how much time it will save them. Sophos’ strategy seems to resonate as well: do more with less. With the same console and agent they have anti-malware, application control, HIPS and client firewall. Still, there are things that are yet lacking: integrated NAC, device control, DLP. All three of these will be released in the next 12 months. But what about software inventory, vulnerability assessment, and patch management? I mentioned this stuff a year ago and I still suspect they want it. Maybe they will buy Lumension “Secure Link” or Bit9 to get it at it.

I’ve recently done some research into BigFix. I can’t help but announce that they do more with less - better. What Sophos does quite well in the scope of anti-threat and application control, BigFix does with hardware and software asset discovery, software license inventory and usage metering, software distribution, patching/remediation, OS provisioning, software configuration management, vulnerability management, DLP, NAC…and anti-malware.

I know the idea of using a superagent on the desktop bothers Hoff but

robust protocols, strong mutual authentication, encryption, resilient operating systems and applications that don’t suck

are just a pipe dream right now. Master-agents are the way to go and it looks to me like BigFix has an easy lead. The whole fixlet idea combined with their architecture is pretty much a platform to do whatever the hell you want as far as controlling your endpoints goes - regardless of location.

Yep. More with less.