Utimaco - Company History

Company History

During the late 1980s and into the 1990s, Sophos primarily sold a range of security technologies in the UK. This included encryption tools.

Late in the 1990s, Sophos concentrated its efforts onto sales of anti-virus technology and embarked on an a program of international expansion. Sophos opened subsidiary operations and moved to selling with channel partners.

2006:

• Steve Munford was named CEO of Sophos.
• Co-founders Dr Hruska and Dr Lammer remain as members of the board of directors.
• Peter Gyenes was named Sophos Chairman.

2007:

• Sophos approaches Edugeek with legal action due to the posts of one of its members. Sophos apologized for their actions and blamed a rogue employee.

2009:

• Sophos announced job cuts of five per cent of its workforce, including 30 at the company's headquarters in Abingdon.
• Sophos released Sophos Endpoint Security and Control 9, Sophos Enterprise Console 4, and Sophos Control Center 4.

2010:

• Sophos releases Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition. This software was made available free of charge.
• Sophos announces job cuts of around seven percent of their workforce in response to poorer than expected growth in the first half of 2010.
• Majority interest of Sophos is sold to Apax>
• Nick Bray, formerly Group CFO at Micro Focus International, is named Sophos CFO.
• Sophos launches Naked Security, a security blog that focuses on news, research, advice and opinion.

2011

• Sophos releases Sophos Endpoint Protection 10, SafeGuard Enterprise 6, and Sophos Mobile Control 2.
• Utimaco are accused of supplying data monitoring and tracking software to partners that have sold to governments such as Syria. Sophos issued a statement apologizing and confirming that partner Area terminated their project in Syria and that the project did not result in an operational system.
• Sophos releases Sophos Virus Removal Tool, a free tool that detects and removes viruses.

2012

• Kris Hagerman, formerly CEO at Corel Corporation, was named Sophos CEO, joining the company’s board. Former CEO Steve Munford became non-executive chairman of the board.
• A software update caused user machines to identify the update software itself as malware.
• Sophos employees raised £25,862.62 for UK Charity Prince’s Trust, raising money with a sponsored palace-to-palace bike ride and a book-and-bake sales at UK headquarters in Abingdon, UK.

2013

• Sophos launched four security suites: Sophos Complete Security Suite; Sophos UTM; Sophos EndUser Data Suite; and Sophos EndUser Web Suite.
• Sophos employees raised £6910 ($10,450 USD) for Comic Relief's Red Nose Day