Sophos Project Darwin is security survival of the fittest

With security threats becoming smarter and more evolved by the day, the need for intelligent protection is greater than ever.

Fortunately Sophos thinks it has found the answer, with its latest launches looking to harness the power of AI and machine learning to help detect and conquer new threats to your business.

Earlier this month, the company revealed Project Darwin, a new initiative that it says can keep organisations safe from threats that they may not even know exist yet.

We spoke to Dan Schiappa, SVP and GM of Sophos Products to find out more about exactly what Project Darwin is, and why it could be the key to helping secure your business.

Predictive security

Although utilising AI and machine learning in business software, including security protection, is not exactly a new idea, Schiappa says that Project Darwin can offer safety like no other product around today.

“It allows you to be predictive in your security,” he told TechRadar Pro at Sophos’ recent London launch event, “and that means that if you build good models, and you use the right approaches, you can build protection for malware you’ve never seen before – or in some cases, malware that hasn’t even been developed yet.”

“What’s unique about our deep learning mechanism is that it does actually does learn on its own,” he adds, noting that traditional endpoint security used to be reactive, in that it had to have a patient zero to develop its knowledge around.

However now with deep learning, security models can become predictive instead, with Project Darwin using different machine learning levels to scrutinise whatever data you feed it before drawing in-depth conclusions on how your organisation works and what threats it faces. 

The service can then dynamically change its protection depending on the threat situation, something Schiappa calls a, “logical next step” in security market at the moment.

“Hackers are trying to find the seams in your coverage,” he notes, “we want to build a system that, like Darwin’s theory, can automatically adapt to survive and protect itself.”

Project Darwin’s launch comes alongside the release of the latest version of Sophos’ Intercept X platform, which looks to give businesses the best protection, whatever their budget.

Intercept X Advanced with EDR provides comprehensive protection for even small IT teams thanks to the company’s latest advances in deep learning.

Sophos’ extensive deep learning network analyses millions of threats to track and alert users to new threats before providing a full run-down online, providing what the company calls an, “expert in a box”.

“Our strategy is in each critical product that we have, to be the best that we can be,” Schiappa says, “Protection is the most important thing….the more we can protect, the less you have to worry about.”