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Key to the Endpoint Security product is a central console that takes much of the administrative legwork out of managing devices and the security policies and procedures applied to them.

The Enterprise Console 2.0 handles Sophos' antivirus, antispyware, anti-adware, unwanted application detection and, new to Sophos' malware armoury, client firewall security services.

The firewall technology comes courtesy of Russian firewall developer Agnitum, with whom a licensing agreement was struck early last year. Sophos has engineered this to include detection for application hijacking and impersonation among other features. But despite the broad platform support of Endpoint Security as a whole, the firewall element is only available for Windows and Mac.

Also new is the integration of Cisco NAC (network admission controls) to check the security status of devices trying to connect to the company network.

From the console, admins can set and configure policies and access various views on the security status of devices on the network.

But unique to Sophos, the company claims, Endpoint Security

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will detect, block and clean up security threats, including Registry fixes and cull related processes that would otherwise reinfect the system affected.

The solution is broad both in terms of platform and version support, running on everything from Windows and Mac to flavours of Linux and Unix, including Solaris, HP UX and IBM's AIX, and even OS/2 and VMS. Novell's Netware is also supported.

The goal is to enable admins to only have to configure security settings once: there's no need to jump across multifarious management consoles to set the same policies for different security components, and different platforms.

Sophos' CEO Steve Munford told us that while consolidation in the security industry has led to lots of acquisitions as companies seek to flesh out their security offering, simply rebadging existing products isn't giving enterprise customers what they want. 'Large companies want to see more things integrated, not more products,' he said. Having to apply the same settings to different components and platforms is just repeating work,' he said, 'and that leads to errors'.

Currently Sophos' Internet gateway and endpoint management consoles remain separate. However, Group Product Manager John Shaw said the company was working to offer the integration of this too into a single console. But he pointed out that large enterprises often have separate teams dedicated to each of these in any case.

Endpoint Security will be available on a per user basis, with all-year, round-the-clock support as standard and can be bought through Sophos' channel partners.

For more information visit the Sophos website.