Sophos Home Premium Antivirus - Review

Sophos Home is a well-established brand, known for a long time for the free version of its antivirus. However, the company has decided to retire the free suite, focusing its efforts on Sophos Home Premium, the paid package that expands the already quite comprehensive features that users had become accustomed to with the free version.

Sophos Home Premium is configured as a suite suitable primarily for the most basic users, while still offering good protection and the ability to install antivirus on up to ten devices.

Click here to subscribe to Sophos Home Premium , starting from € 37.46 per year And we can notice the simplicity right away, since the plan is unique in terms of features offered, so you will not have to extricate yourself from various comparative tables to understand which version is best suited to yours needs, simply choose an annual, two-year or three-year plan and start using all the features included in the suite right away.

Plans and prices

1 year | € 37.46 instead of € 49.95 2 years | € 67.46 instead of € 89.95 3 years | € 86.21 instead of € 114.95
As we said, the only difference between the three plans offered by Sophos is the duration of the subscription. However, before committing, you can take advantage of a free trial version, which does not require the insertion of a credit card. Plus, all plans come with a 30-day money back guarantee.

App Antivirus

However, with a significant impact on the system (just under 6% according to PCMark Professional benchmarks) , the suite has withstood tampering attempts well, therefore, despite the considerable number of background processes, none of the operations we performed (deleting files, stopping processes, etc.) had an impact on the protection offered by Sophos.

The antivirus interface is quite spartan, with some information on the last update and the date of the last scan, the button to analyze the computer and other minor functions, as well as the inevitable settings.


There is the option in the context menu of File Explorer - useful for analyzing specific files, folders or drives. In any case, it is not possible to perform analyzes if a system scan is already in progress.

The simplicity of Sophos Home also extends to the icon in the system tray, which does not offer any menus. So, in general, the company's motto "Cybersecurity made simple" is applied to the letter to every single area of ​​the Sophos Home Premium suite.

However, the available settings are still selectable from a web interface. The app's Settings button refers to the browser, where you will have to log into your Sophos account and make your choices from there.

On the other hand, you will have everything at your fingertips, including remote management of the various devices, so if you use the suite at a family level, you can manage the protection of the devices of the whole family directly from this interface, especially useful if you are the only one in the house who knows how to use a computer.

Here you can also schedule any scans on the Protection tab, choose various levels of exploit protection, and much more. However, here we really get into the technical and, considering that the options are all active by default, if you are not so familiar with these aspects, it is better not to touch them.

In any case, it is a positive aspect that, despite the excessive simplicity of the app, it is still possible to access more detailed and advanced settings from the web interface.

Protection

Unfortunately Sophos is not included for some time among the brands subject to testing by some independent laboratories, such as SE-Labs. However, according to MRG Effitas, Sophos ranks among the best in protecting against ransomware, banking-level malware and other threats.

In our tests, we employed some custom programs, downloaded malicious files and simulated ransomware attacks.

In terms of behavior analysis, Sophos Home Premium ignored most of the tools we used, however the antivirus engine immediately detected and quarantined dangerous files. Indeed, our custom ransomware was blocked even before it was able to intervene on documents, unlike other antiviruses that are activated only after the file encryption starts.

Unfortunately, the data is no longer complete with a lot, but we hope that AV-Comparatives and AV-Test will start testing Sophos again sooner or later.

Blocking URLs and content

At the blocking level of malicious URLs, a simple level of web protection which however only works with some specific browsers, namely Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari.

Unfortunately, false positives must be managed by going to the whitelist in the console settings, the positive aspect, However, you will be able to apply restrictions to other users, as long as they stay on a supported browser.

Unfortunately, Sophos is spartan even in extra features, however there is a content filtering system, suitable for cont rollo parents. Unfortunately, however, it is very basic and includes three types of sites, a list of sites for adults and inappropriate content, one dedicated to social networks and the world of computing and another for general interests. In addition, there are several areas that you can block, such as drugs, violence, networking and so on; they are all active by default, but you can deactivate them at will.

Unfortunately the tool does not go into more detail, it is not possible to choose, for example, to block only social networks. And although there is a whitelist of authorized domains, there is no blacklist to permanently prevent access to certain sites.

Again, the system only works on the browsers mentioned above. If a user decides to use an alternative browser, for example DuckDuckGo, there will be no way to prevent access to restricted sites.

In any case, if you want to protect younger children or otherwise not enough experts, this tool could prove useful.

Webcam protection and other features

In the area of ​​privacy, Sophos Home offers only one tool, namely monitoring against violations of the webcam.

In our tests we obtained mixed results: if on the one hand it is effective in signaling attempts to acquire images from the webcam, on the other we have noticed that during the use of the webcam through websites web, Sophos Home showed only a small notification, but without the ability to grant or deny access to the webcam. Furthermore, the application does not keep track of our decisions, so we will always be asked whether to approve / deny access for the same apps or processes.

Again, this is an all too basic tool which may also tempt you to turn it off, given the repetition of the notifications.

Sophos indicates the presence of other features, but it was not easy to put them to the test. First, the company claims that Sophos Home protects passwords by preventing malware from stealing usernames and passwords from system memory, however we haven't had a chance to test this claim.

The company also claims that the suite also protects banking and credit card information from malicious people, while also neutralizing keyloggers. We could only verify the last part: we started our own keylogger and tested various sites on Chrome. Sophos proved effective, as it changed the keylogger recorded keystrokes making them unusable.

Unfortunately, the same has not happened to other applications, including the Windows desktop and Outlook, but in general it is a useful feature .

Conclusion

More experienced users may not appreciate the simplicity of Sophos Home Premium Antivirus. Those looking for simple and centralized management of antivirus protection on different devices, on the other hand, might find it interesting, especially in the case of discounts.

Click here to subscribe to Sophos Home Premium, starting from € 37.46 per year