To help organizations protect hybrid work environments and manage the use of emerging technologies, including AI, Sophos has announced Sophos Workspace Protection, an affordable alternative to traditional SASE solutions that helps protect hybrid work and remote work.
Built around Sophos Protected Browser, powered by Island, the solution enables organizations to protect applications, data, users and guests wherever work is done, providing a unified approach to securing modern workplace and hybrid work scenarios.
Security for hybrid work
Traditional approaches to securing hybrid work, which include deploying multiple cloud-based SASE and SSE solutions, typically require significant infrastructure, specialized expertise, and a large investment of time to implement and manage. This approach can increase costs and complexity, while still maintaining gaps in terms of visibility and control in hybrid work environments.
Sophos Workspace Protection takes a different approach by directly protecting the workspace, eliminating the need to reroute traffic through centralized infrastructures. This reduces operational burden and costs, while enabling protections that follow users, applications, internet usage, and data wherever they work, providing organizations with a simpler way to protect hybrid work without adding complexity, regardless of their security maturity level.
At the core of Sophos Workspace Protection is Sophos Protected Browser, powered by Island and designed to integrate seamlessly with the Sophos Central platform. With 85% of the modern workday now taking place in a web browser, Sophos Protected Browser was developed to respond to security challenges where modern work and hybrid work happen¹. It provides organizations with visibility and control at the workspace level, helping them protect sensitive data, manage application access, and enforce policies right in the browser. By integrating security controls into a familiar user experience, Sophos Workspace Protection helps protect hybrid working in both corporate and remote environments without impacting productivity.
“Security teams are increasingly challenged by complexity, especially as hybrid work, SaaS adoption, and AI tools continue to expand the workspace,” said Mike Jude, research director at IDC. “Sophos Workspace Protection reflects a pragmatic shift in the market, delivering key benefits of SASE and SSE through an integrated, endpoint- and browser-centric approach that simplifies deployment, reduces operational burden, and helps organizations govern application and AI usage without adding another layer of infrastructure, even in hybrid work models.”
Control of Shadow IT and Shadow AI
As emerging technologies like generative AI become integrated into daily workflows, organizations are increasingly challenged to understand how these tools are used and what data is shared through them. Recent research shows that more than half of employees globally already use AI tools at work, often before formal policies or controls are in place, increasing the risks associated with Shadow IT and Shadow AI². By providing visibility and control at the workspace level, Sophos Workspace Protection helps organizations assess risks, enforce policies, and monitor the safe use of emerging technologies in hybrid work environments.
What Sophos Workspace Protection includes
Sophos Workspace Protection is offered as a flexible set of integrated components that organizations can deploy together or separately, depending on their security and operational needs in hybrid work scenarios. The following components make up the Workspace Protection suite:
• Sophos Protected Browser: a secure Chromium-based enterprise browser, powered by Island, that provides controls over application usage, local data management, and web filtering. It also integrates Sophos ZTNA for access to private web applications and supports SSH and RDP access for remote administration.
• Sophos ZTNA: a Zero Trust Network Access component that provides secure device-state-based access to private applications, allowing only authorized users and compatible devices to connect, a key aspect for hybrid working.
• Sophos DNS Protection: a cloud DNS security service that can be deployed to individual Windows endpoints as part of Workspace Protection, providing an additional layer of web and phishing protection.
• Email monitoring system: a email security plugin that deploys alongside Google or Microsoft services and monitors email traffic, providing additional detection of unwanted or malicious messages, including phishing.
Together, these components enable key benefits and use cases for organizations securing modern hybrid work environments.
Sophos Expands Browser-Level Visibility and Control to Deliver a More Comprehensive Security Solution That Protects Hybrid Working
“Sophos has long protected remote and hybrid workers with industry-leading endpoint and network security, but today’s hybrid work environments demand greater application and data governance,” said Joe Levy, CEO of Sophos. “By combining Island’s enterprise browser technology with the security capabilities of Sophos and the Sophos Central platform, we help organizations protect critical data and hybrid workforces with a solution that is easier to deploy and manage.”
“The browser has become the primary workspace of modern organizations,” says Mike Fey, co-founder and CEO of Island. “By leveraging Sophos Protected Browser and integrating it with the Sophos Central platform, we expand visibility and control at the browser level to deliver a more comprehensive security solution that helps protect hybrid working without disrupting the user experience.”
Key benefits for organizations
Sophos Workspace Protection helps organizations protect distributed and hybrid workers, manage the use of emerging tools and services, including AI, and facilitate fast and flexible access for suppliers and partners. The solution also strengthens defenses against phishing, browser-based threats, and other attacks targeting users in the modern and hybrid workplace.
