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Sophos Takes Center Stage at Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona and Issues Mobile Threat Report.

Oxford - February 24, 2014 - Sophos today announced growing momentum for its Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions. The company also announced its presence at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, 24-27 February, to share its vision for MDM and demonstrate its best-in-class solutions, most notably, Sophos Mobile Control. Attendees to Mobile World Congress can find Sophos at stand 5H11 in hall 5.

Rapid customer growth, industry analyst validation and a new Mobile Security Threat Report from SophosLabs highlight this announcement.

Sophos Mobile Control

Protecting millions of mobile devices across tens of thousands of customer accounts, the latest release of Sophos Mobile Control (SMC) features an easy-to-use web-based console - deployed either on-premise or as a Service - to manage, protect and secure data. It delivers effective mobile device management to control the devices that access corporate systems. Using Sophos Mobile Control, IT teams can equally enforce regulatory compliance as well as corporate-mandated policies for complete data and device security without complexity. SMC supports Windows Phone 8, Android, and iOS 7, Apple’s latest mobile operating system.

In a recent research note by IDC, 24% of SMB organizations currently utilize an MDM solution to govern and manage their mobile devices. The study identified Sophos Mobile Control as the most-deployed MDM product among all survey respondents at 25%. In addition, last month, Sophos was named a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms, and recently received a positive review from the 451 Group.

“We’re thrilled by the continued adoption of our MDM solutions. As the IDC report confirms, the market opportunity is huge, and Sophos Mobile Control is already at the head of the pack,” said Dan Schiappa, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Enduser Protection Group, Sophos. “As organizations look to define and refine BYOD policies and comply with regulations and compliance issues, Sophos continues to be a trusted provider for endpoint, network and server protection solutions.”

Customers in Action

Based in Madrid, Spain, Acciona is a civil engineering, construction and infrastructure corporation. They rely on Sophos for endpoint security and have more than 2,000 licenses of Sophos Mobile Control. Juan Ignacio Gordon, CISO for Acciona, said, “As an engineering organization, it is critical that we secure our mobile devices for our users. Sophos Mobile Control has allowed us to easily deploy security to every device, while giving us the peace of mind that all company data is safe and confidential. We chose Sophos for our mobile security because it meets our needs and is able to scale with our business.”

The local government of the city of Lansingerland in the Netherlands uses Sophos Mobile Control to protect its employees’ devices. Frans de Wit, Teamleader I&A, Gemeente Lansingerland, Netherlands, said, “Sophos Mobile Control has allowed us to easily deploy security to every device, while giving us the peace of mind that all important data is safe and confidential. We chose Sophos for our mobile security because it meets our needs and is able to scale with us.”

Sophos Mobile Security Threat Report

Sophos has launched its first Mobile Security Threat Report at Mobile World Congress. Written by SophosLabs principal researcher Vanja Svajcer, the report shows that the mobile revolution is clearly in effect, and as a result, mobile malware is on the rise. The massive growth in Android devices—and the largely unregulated Android app market - has produced a sharp rise in malware targeting that platform. In the past 12 months, mobile malware seen by SophosLabs has increased six-fold to well over 650,000 individual pieces of malware for Android—a tiny fraction of the number of pieces of malware out there for the traditional PC, but the fastest growing threat landscape. The report also shows that in some countries - Russia, Austria and Sweden - mobile malware has overtaken desktop malware, while in others - Spain and Great Britain - the playing field is leveling out. Russia, India, Austria, Spain and China all have high mobile threat exposure levels.

The report also details the types of mobile-specific malware and provides insights into how hackers target and profit from compromised devices. It includes near-term predictions and concludes with 10 tips to preventing mobile malware.