Cutting-edge IT security: Sophos Discover 2018

An award-winning event for TSG

Talks at Sophos Discover 2018

What we learnt from Sophos Discover 2018

Keynote speech from Stephen Attenborough

I attended my first Sophos Partner Event “Sophos Discover 2018” this week at the rather grand 8 Northumberland Avenue in London.

An award-winning event for TSG

Being my first such event, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t winning awards (Small Business Partner of the Year for the 8th year running no less), virtual reality gaming (TSG won this too, I think I see a pattern emerging) or racing Tour de France legend Cadel Evans on a static bike (didn’t win this one. Darn it). It wasn’t all fun and games though!

Talks at Sophos Discover 2018

What I did expect was a number of fascinating talks from senior Sophos figures including Sophos CEO Kris Hagerman, who assured us that Sophos is determined to continually be at the cutting edge when it comes to innovating and developing technologies that keep you, your data and your businesses safe from the ever-expanding threat landscape. In my opinion, Sophos is the very best in the industry at what it does and from what I saw during Discover 2018 I don’t think that’s likely to change anytime soon.

What we learnt from Sophos Discover 2018

Most of the day consisted of a series of breakout session where Sophos product specialists took us through a number of innovations. I learned how Intercept X V.2 with Deep Machine Learning (artificial intelligence no less!) can detect existing and zero-day threats (that’s malware that’s never been seen before) with incredible accuracy and low false positives. The Sophos guys showed how Synchronised Security is changing the legacy approach to cyber-security by allowing all those once disparate security products (AV, firewalls, encryption software etc.) to talk to each another in an ever-expanding number of ways in an effort to co-ordinate their activities and better protect your systems. They also to us through how new features within the Sophos XG series of next-gen firewalls in tandem with Sophos Central Endpoint Protection can really let you get a handle on what applications your staff are using within your network perimeter, thus reducing the impact of shadow-IT i.e. when staff are using applications they’re not supposed to. Naughty.

Keynote speech from Stephen Attenborough

The day was rounded off with a keynote speech from Stephen Attenborough, Commercial Director for Virgin Galactic, whose story of how his company is aiming to do something that not only has never been done before, but that no-one even though possible, commercial space flight, is not only happening but is imminent. To hear someone with his vision, passion and sheer determination to succeed talk about the things that they’re passionate about was, well, inspiring. Corny? Possibly. True though? Definitely.

Of course, all work and no play (aside from the racing cycling legends and playing VR games that is…) makes Grant a dull boy so after the event, Sophos laid on small soiree at the fantastic Altitude 360 after the event and let me tell you, if you think London is beautiful during the daytime it looks even better from 29 stories up at night.

So in short a very informative, interesting and, if I’m honest, rather tiring day. Thanks Sophos, I had a blast, hope I can return to do it all again next year (I want another crack at that static bike if I do).

About the author

Grant Campbell is one of TSG’s Senior Technical Specialists, working with our customers on all things IT security. From anti-ransomware to encryption, if you need to protect your business data or keep the cyber-criminals at bay Grant is your guy. 

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