To be fair, Sophos has also engaged in its share of FUD. John Shaw, the vendor's director of product management for endpoints, claims that customers can't run an older version of the Symantec software while they install version 11, leaving the machines unprotected. Symantec says that's simply not true.
Sophos will have to do more than make claims to topple Symantec, which still leads all security vendors on the desktop, with 38% of the worldwide market for antivirus software, according to Gartner. But GE's move is a punch in the gut for Symantec as well as McAfee, which also has lost at least one large customer to Sophos. And more blows may follow. "GE is just the tip of the iceberg," says Selby.
But the market is demanding far more than just classic antivirus protection as the very nature of threats has changed. Polymorphic viruses and malware can't be stopped by signature matching and require anomaly detection; data privacy regulations require that laptops and smartphones be locked down to prevent data loss, and enterprise customers want to manage it all with a single agent on a laptop run from a single management console.
Top Illustration By Mick McGinty
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