Sophos is expanding its cybersecurity platform with new identity threat detection and response capabilities following its acquisition of Secureworks, reinforcing its leadership in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) space.
Sophos, a cybersecurity solutions provider, said ransomware remains a significant threat as attack methods continue to evolve, now intensified by the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) to exploit software vulnerabilities.
“There’s no time when an organization can be safe from ransomware,” Aaron Bugal, field CTO at Sophos, said in an interview. “We are seeing a lot of threat actors using various vulnerabilities in software to obtain access to organizations. That might be through exploiting vulnerabilities or using credentials from illicit sources like the dark web.”
Bugal also warned that generative AI (GenAI) is now being used to write malicious code, despite companies claiming to have guardrails in place.
It’s still not 100% certain that criminals are not using it.
Sophos said global cybercrime losses could exceed $6 trillion in the coming years, underscoring the need for companies to strengthen their defenses.
“Anything you can prevent is obviously the best kind of cybersecurity strategy,” said Torjus Gylstorff, chief revenue officer at Sophos. “Prevention has moved into detection and protection. What we are seeing now is that, as a company, we are evolving our capabilities in terms of managed detection and response, which also addresses another issue in cybersecurity, the shortage of skilled resources.”
Gylstorff said the Secureworks acquisition enhances Sophos’ MDR portfolio and helps address emerging threats to identity systems, now considered the critical perimeter of an organization.
“We are really underscoring our leadership position within the Managed Detection and Response space,” he said. “It gives us access to a number of new areas that will benefit our customers, such as identity threat detection and response.”
He noted that being able to ensure integrity in the identities across an organization is really important to defending the infrastructure.
“That’s a capability we’re adding to the portfolio through the acquisition of Secureworks,” he said.
Sophos serves more than 600,000 customers worldwide, with 30,000 using its MDR services. The Asia Pacific cybersecurity market is expected to double in the next five years, with the Asia Pacific and Japan region outpacing other global regions.
With Secureworks, Sophos is expanding into the enterprise market while continuing to serve mid-market and small businesses.
“One of the important things about being a vendor in cybersecurity is we believe the most effective infrastructure and architecture is an open one that allows for integration with other technologies in the customer environment,” Gylstorff said. “We want to create that visibility, to ingest data from other technologies in the security stack. It’s important for us to be effective in those environments.”
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