Security for everyone - Reviewing Sophos Home

Sophos is a company that focuses mostly on developing and selling business security products. However, they are also offering a home security product for free, which any home user can download and use. We were curious to see what Sophos Home is all about and whether it is efficient at protecting our Windows computers. Therefore, we have taken it for a test drive, and now we would like to tell you what the pros and cons of this product are. Read our review and see whether Sophos Home is a security tool that you want on your Windows computers and devices:

What is Sophos Home good at?

Sophos Home is a good security tool for people who want:

• A security product that offers a simple user interface
• To be protected efficiently against dangerous websites, regardless of which web browser they like using
• Good anti-malware protection
• All of the above, for free!

Pros and cons

In the following list, we have gathered some of the best aspects of Sophos Home:

• The antivirus engine is very good at cleaning malware
• The web shield filters all the internet traffic going on your computer, so you get the same excellent protection regardless of the web browser you prefer
• The user interface is simple, so absolute beginners will probably love it
• It has no negative effect on the performance and speed of your computer
• It does not bundle anything you might not want or need
• It is free!

On the other hand, here are a couple of the things we did not like about Sophos Home:

• The antivirus engine is slower than others at scanning your computer for malware
• Simplicity means that you do not get any advanced configuration options
• There are no logs or statistics available offline, only online

Verdict

Sophos Home is security software that is not for everyone. We like the efficiency of its antivirus engine, and we are also fans of its simple and minimalist approach. This product can please beginners and users who are not interested in complicated antivirus products. However, its simplicity does have a cost, meaning that there are no advanced options to configure, no useful extra features that could increase your security besides the basics that are provided by Sophos Home. Also, it does not offer firewall protection, so you have to rely on the Windows Firewall. We believe Sophos Home is an excellent choice for people who prefer free security products and do not want to fiddle with complicated security apps. Advanced users who want complete protection that also includes a firewall, should look for commercial products, not free ones.

The download and installation experience

You start by going to Sophos' website and creating a user account. Unless you create an online account, you cannot use this free product. However, this is a straightforward process, and it only requires a few details about you: your name, email address and a password.

After you create an account, use it to log in to your Sophos Home dashboard webpage. As you can see in the image below, this webpage looks simple and very easy to use. To install Sophos Home on your computer, click or tap on the PC Installer button.

Then, your browser starts downloading a file called SophosInstall.exe, which has a size of 255MB. Installing the security application on our test computer took only a few minutes, during which time the only additional data being downloaded from Sophos' servers was the virus definitions database updates, which had a total size 14.7MB. The installation process is easy and straightforward, as there are no settings to make or options to choose from. You just click Install and then Finish at the end.

When the installation is finished, there is no user interface loading and no dialogues displayed by this security product. However, if you take a look in your system tray, you can see that the application was loaded and it is already monitoring your security.

Thus far, downloading and installing Sophos Home on a Windows computer is an easy thing to do, and we love that.

Integration with Windows, web browsers and universal Windows platform apps

Sophos Home automatically disables Windows Defender during its installation, and that is a good thing as it avoids possible conflicts and performance issues. On the other hand, Sophos Home does not disable Windows Firewall, but it has an excellent reason for not doing it: Sophos Home does not include a firewall module. You can either rely on Windows Firewall for protection against network attacks or install a different standalone firewall application. The good part is that it means you should not have problems using any of the networking features available in Windows.

For your online security, Sophos Home does not include any web browser extensions and instead prefers to scan all the internet traffic that goes on your computer to stop you from visiting malicious websites.

Another positive about the integration of Sophos Home and our Windows computers is the fact that this security product seems to have no adverse effect on your computer's performance. We make this statement based on the measurements we did. First, we used BootRacer to measure the boot time of our test computer before and after installing Sophos Home, and the results we got were the same. Secondly, we looked at the RAM consumption of Sophos Home: when nothing extraordinary happens, it needs only about 22MB of RAM to run. That is very little! Thirdly, we also ran a few tests with Speedtest.net and with LAN Speed Test. The speeds were the same before and after installing the security suite, which means that it has no negative effect on data transfers on the internet or local network, and that is an excellent result!

Sophos Home is a security product that is well integrated with Windows. The networking features are unhindered by Sophos Home because the security product does not include a firewall module. As for your online security, you get a web shield that filters all the internet traffic, with no web browser extensions involved, and that is something we like. Finally, we also appreciate the fact that this security product does not slow down the computer or your data transfers.

Ease of use and configuration

Security products usually offer sophisticated user interfaces, with lots options and settings. Even if they are not obvious, they are there, organized in multiple windows, sections, lists, and so on. That is not the case for Sophos Home, which offers probably the most straightforward user interface we have seen in a security product. Here is an image of it to get a better idea of what we are talking about:

The user interface shows whether your computer is secure and gives you two buttons: "Scan My Computer" and "Manage My Security." "Scan My Computer" starts a full computer scan for malware and potentially unwanted applications, and "Manage My Security" opens your default web browser and takes you to your Sophos online account. If you start scanning your computer, the user interface shows you the progress and the number of threats identified, but not anything else.

"Manage My Security" takes you online and after you sign into your Sophos account; you can see the Status and History of events on your device, set antimalware and website exceptions and turn the Real-Time Protection, Potentially Unwanted Application (PUA) Protection, and Web Protection features on or off.

Exceptions must be entered manually, by typing the full path of folders or files that you do not want to be scanned for threats, or by typing the addresses of the websites that you do not want to be filtered. This is not as easy as it could be, but all the few other features that can be turned on or off are controlled with the help of simple switches, so that is good.

If you need to, you can also access the help documentation online, by clicking on the question mark button found on the bottom-right corner of the desktop user interface. If you need further support for Sophos Home, you can also check the community forums and the knowledge base. We did not find any option to get support via email or phone.

Regarding alerts and notifications, Sophos Home is right to the point: you get an alert each time there's malware detected on your computer. When that happens, the user interface shows you that there are one or more alerts.

If you want to see logs and statistics, you do not get any in Sophos Home, at least locally on your computer. However, if you go online on your Sophos Home dashboard, you can see the number of threats cleaned and websites blocked on each of your computers.

Sophos Home is the security product with the most straightforward user interface we have ever seen. That is not a bad thing, and we must admit that we like this approach. It is one of the best options for people who do not want to use complicated apps.

Read the next page of this review to see how efficient Sophos Home is at protecting your computer from network attacks and malware, and other information about it.

Firewall protection

Sophos Home does not include a firewall module, so you will have to put up with using the default Windows Firewall, or look for a separate application that does this job. If you go with using the default Windows Firewall, you should know that it is not the best choice you could make although it is probably not the worst either.

We have tested it with Nmap and Nessus, two popular network vulnerability scanners, and while using a private network profile on our test computer, Nmap found 8 open ports and Nessus discovered 7 open ports and one vulnerability to man-in-the-middle attacks. When we switched to a public network profile, neither Nmap nor Nessus found any open ports. The only information these two scanners could get in any situation was the MAC address of our test computer, but that is not a significant detail regarding security.

Long story short, Sophos Home has no firewall module, so you have to either rely on the protection you get from Windows Firewall, or look for another product that offers this type of protection.

Antivirus and antispyware protection

The first thing we checked regarding antivirus and antispyware protection, was to see how good Sophos Home is at protecting you when online while surfing the internet. Sophos Home filters all the internet traffic that goes on your computer, and that means that you should get the same protection regardless of the web browser you prefer to use.

To evaluate the efficiency of the web shield, we used the most popular web browsers today - Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge and Opera - to try to visit some websites known to be malicious. The good news is that Sophos Home stopped us from loading all the websites we tried visiting, in all the web browsers we mentioned. That is an outstanding result!

Then, we wanted to see what Sophos Home does when put face to face with a removable drive filled with malicious files: we took a USB memory stick, we copied a bunch of viruses on it, and then we plugged it in our test laptop that had Sophos Home on it. The security application immediately started to detect and remove the viruses, which is what we wished to see. In a minute or two, there was no virus left on the memory stick, so this is yet another outstanding result for Sophos Home.

Our final efficiency test for Sophos Home was also the most complex we run. We installed Windows 10 on our test laptop, then we infected it with many viruses, and then we asked Sophos Home to install and clean our computer. Fortunately, Sophos Home was able to install without any problems and then immediately started to detect and remove infected files from the computer. After a full system scan, the laptop was clean and could be used again.

While testing Sophos Home, we also did a couple of measurements on how fast it is at scanning a computer for viruses. On a Windows 10 system partition that is 126GB large and has about 35GB of files on it, Sophos Home needed 15 minutes on average to do a full system antivirus scan. That is a longer time than many other antivirus engines, so this is not a good point for Sophos Home.

We also took a look at what other independent security organizations had to say about Sophos Home, but neither AV-Test nor AV-Comparatives or Virus Bulletin did test Sophos Home in the last few years.

Sophos Home is a security product that is great for protecting you both against online and offline threats. We have seen it block malicious websites and we have seen it clean nasty virus infections. With the sole exception of it having a slower than the average antivirus engine, we must declare ourselves happy with the efficiency of the antivirus offered by Sophos Home.

Extra features

Sophos Home is a basic security product that bundles one additional feature that you might not expect in a free product: a website filtering engine. The Web Filtering section from your Sophos online account allows you to block the browsing to categories of websites you choose. For instance, if one of the computers you own and on which Sophos Home is installed, is used by your children, you could use this tool to block their access to social networks, peer to peer websites, or adult and potentially inappropriate websites. We tested this tool, and we found it works well, so if you are a parent, you might find it useful.

If you want a security application that does nothing other than protect you against malware, spyware, potentially unwanted applications, and similar threats, but which can also protect your children from dangerous and inappropriate websites, then Sophos Home is an excellent choice.

Default settings that you might want to adjust

This is yet another area in which we do not have any recommendation for you. As you have seen in this review, Sophos Home offers a straightforward user interface, with very few settings to be configured. As a result, there is nothing you can adjust to make it better.

What is your opinion about Sophos Home?

Sophos Home is a security product that tries to keep things as simple as possible, offering only the barebone protection that everybody needs: a good anti-malware engine and a good web shield. It does not bundle any bloatware, and that is something rare in the world of free software. Do you like it? Do you already use it? Share your thoughts in the comments section. We are eager to hear from you!