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Sophos Home Edition version 9.5 Preview

bobcook

The engineering team for Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac is happy to announce the availability of a preview of our next significant release for Home Edition. You can download this installer directly from our site using this link:

http://www.sophos.com/Pages/DownloadRedirect.aspx?downloadKey={8579BC43-753D-48D0-8C74-60593FEB7097}

Follow that link, accept the EULA, run the installer. It will automatically upgrade an existing 9.4 installation to version 9.5 if required. Your existing settings will be preserved during the upgrade.

This update improves stability and performance. No new features, but it addresses issues reported here in the forum and from our business customers.

NOTE: this version requires Mac OS X 10.8 or newer. It will not install and will not run on Mac OS X 10.6 or 10.7.

Now for the FAQ:

  • Is this the same as Sophos Home? No this is the "classic" Home Edition. The team working on Sophos Home will be incorporating this new version into their product in the coming months.
  • What does Preview mean? We aren't yet releasing this to all users. We want to get your feedback first, from willing volunteers. Once we are satified this release is good enough for everyone we'll automatically upgrade to this version.
  • Should I reboot after installation? Not required immediately but doing so will purge the old kernel drivers from memory.
  • Any new features? Not really. This release contains a full rewrite of the on-access scanning subsystem to improve system stability and reduce overall memory usage. This release also runs the content scanner as an unpriviliged user, same as the web scanner in the past, as security best-practice. You may notice scheduled scans or scanning from the Finder is snappier though.
  • Is it safe to run? You've tested it, right? Yes this release has passed our internal quality assurance process. We have been running this version internally for a while now, it has proven quite stable.

Please post any issues you have, we definitely want to hear about your experience as soon as possible. Thank you!



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  • 0

    I just learned about the Sophos 9.5 beta from the weekly email Digest, downloaded and installed it over Sophos 9.4.2. The installation went smoothly and I rebooted and then ran "Update Now" and got a megabyte level update (mine are usually a few KB's) so maybe that should be part of the installation procedure since the AutoUpdate default setting leaves "Check for Updates" on connection unchecked.

    I ran a partial scan in which nothing was found, as expected. However, in looking at the log, I noticed that while Scan Adware and PUAs is checked in Preferences, the Configuration in the log says:    Scan for adware and potentially unwanted applications (PUA): No

    At the same time, the results of the scan showed "Files Scanned: 50101, Threats Found: 0, PUAs found: 0, Issues found: 0." Were the PUAs not looked for because of the Configuration or were they looked for but none were found?


  • 0 in reply to ZRL1

    Hey ZRL1, nice to hear from you (and thanks for installing the preview - much appreciate the support).

    Just spoke to the developer for this feature, he wants to know which preference setting you checked. There is one for On-Access scanning (in Preferences) as well as a separate one for each Custom scan (in the Options panel). In a quick check, it seems to be working as expected at our end.

    ---

    Bob Cook (bob.cook@sophos.com) Director, Software Development

  • 0 in reply to bobcook

    bobcook said:

    ...which preference setting you checked. There is one for On-Access scanning (in Preferences) as well as a separate one for each Custom scan (in the Options panel)...

    That's the explanation because in the window that opens when "Open Scans..." is selected, Scan Settings offers the Adware and PUA scans again and in this case it was not selected. Once selected, when the scan was run again, the Log showed "Scan for adware and potentially unwanted applications (PUA): Yes" in Configuration.


    However, that selection can be made independently for each of the Custom Scans and the default "Scan Local Drives" but only the "Scan Local Drives" setting applies to Finder Scans. Moreover, the Scan Settings window that opens when a scan in selected only shows the small statement that "These settings apply also to items scanned from Finder" when the default scan (Scan Local Drives) is selected and then only when the Options button within the Settings panel is selected. Since one of the very useful features of Sophos is the right-click Finder scan which doesn't require opening the Sophos application at all from the Menu bar, perhaps putting the options for a Finder scan in the general Preferences panel as a separate item rather than in the right-click menu in the window for defined scans ("Open Scans...">"Scan Local Drives") might make the options more obvious.

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  • 0 in reply to bobcook

    bobcook said:

    ...which preference setting you checked. There is one for On-Access scanning (in Preferences) as well as a separate one for each Custom scan (in the Options panel)...

    That's the explanation because in the window that opens when "Open Scans..." is selected, Scan Settings offers the Adware and PUA scans again and in this case it was not selected. Once selected, when the scan was run again, the Log showed "Scan for adware and potentially unwanted applications (PUA): Yes" in Configuration.


    However, that selection can be made independently for each of the Custom Scans and the default "Scan Local Drives" but only the "Scan Local Drives" setting applies to Finder Scans. Moreover, the Scan Settings window that opens when a scan in selected only shows the small statement that "These settings apply also to items scanned from Finder" when the default scan (Scan Local Drives) is selected and then only when the Options button within the Settings panel is selected. Since one of the very useful features of Sophos is the right-click Finder scan which doesn't require opening the Sophos application at all from the Menu bar, perhaps putting the options for a Finder scan in the general Preferences panel as a separate item rather than in the right-click menu in the window for defined scans ("Open Scans...">"Scan Local Drives") might make the options more obvious.

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  • 0 in reply to ZRL1

    Thanks for the feedback, your suggestion makes sense. We will be revisiting the UI in a future project and I'll recommend separating out the settings for Finder Scans into their own panel.

    ---

    Bob Cook (bob.cook@sophos.com) Director, Software Development

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