Sophos is a strong advocate for thorough independent testing of cybersecurity products to help customers choose what’s right for their environment and for vendors to improve the protection in their technology.

In the 2019 AEP Group Test published by NSS Labs today, our next-gen endpoint solution Intercept X was recognized as having the highest security effectiveness and the most efficient TCO (total cost of ownership) of the 19 endpoint security products tested. In this 2019 AEP Group Test by NSS Labs, we are pleased to see our technology outperform all other products, supporting what our own internal tests and numerous independent reviews have confirmed since the product first launched.

While these results confirm what we already know (it’s great to get high praise) we encourage every business to evaluate the effectiveness of a solution using multiple independent data points and carry out an assessment of its ability to work within their environment. We are confident that we have developed the most effective products but realize every business is unique just like independent testing reports.

Great strides are being made to level the playing fields in cybersecurity testing. Sophos encourages testing to be fair, rigorous, transparent, and collaborative, and it should seek to replicate the threat environment as it exists for customers, not just in lab conditions. Testing labs need to work with vendors to configure environments correctly, vendors should make it easy for their products to be scrutinized, and testing labs should engage end users to specify the features to be reviewed.

As a supporter of the anti-malware testing standards and Board member of AMTSO, Sophos CTO Joe Levy recognizes that while third party cybersecurity tests are not yet perfect, they still have plenty of value.

“Measuring cybersecurity product effectiveness is unimaginably complex. With threats and attack techniques increasing and evolving at an ever-accelerating rate, testing houses need to make extraordinary investments in their laboratories if they are to produce meaningful and rigorous measurements of cybersecurity product effectiveness. But just like all cybersecurity products are not equal, not all testing houses are equal and this remains somewhat opaque to the consumers of their reports, particularly when there is insufficient transparency around methodologies or execution details. Competent independent testing labs provide a great service to vendors and buyers, and are critical to the cybersecurity ecosystem to drive higher standards of protection for all”.

We’re happy to continue to see our products succeed in third party testing and receive awards, and we encourage you to explore the details of the testing reports at www.sophos.com.

If you’re ready to see for yourself, you can download a free trial of Intercept X at www.sophos.com/intercept-x today.