The security market is full of free solutions these days, and even companies that once resisted the trend have had to step into the ring and compete on equal terms. Sophos recently decided that now is the perfect time to offer Sophos Home, a free product aimed at personal use. Its administration happens via the web, and with a single account you can manage up to ten different systems.
Have you done your year-end cleanup? Are you looking for a new free security option? The offer is extensive, provided you accept simplified interfaces, fewer advanced settings, and a greater dependence on the cloud. That tends to be enough to protect a computer in the vast majority of cases. While there are threats like ransomware that can easily outpace traditional antivirus, it all starts with common sense, paired with solid basic protection. So the question is: who is willing to give more for the unbeatable price of zero?
Protection and Management
Sophos believes it has the answer with its free version of Sophos Home. All you need to do is create an account on the official page, download the client from inside it, and install it on every computer you want to protect. The work of Sophos Home is divided into three parts: real-time protection, blocking of malicious web pages, and detection of PUPs that try to run in the background.
All the fine-tuning of the antivirus takes place in the online dashboard. From customizing the web categories to filter to setting up exceptions, you'll need a connection.
Installation and Windows Defender
The Sophos Home installer is huge: 215 MB in our tests, and the whole process takes between ten and fifteen minutes (since it updates its database). Sophos Home disables Windows Defender as soon as it kicks in, but if you're on Windows 10, remember you can re-enable it as a periodic scanner.
