Web Productivity Filtering
The Sophos Mobile Security web filtering now supports filtering of URLs based on categories. The user can define the behaviour for 14 categories and if sites of these categories should be allowed, blocked or the user should be warned.
Application Reputation
Sophos Mobile Security introduces a new scanner mode. App Reputation uses Sophos Live Protection to provide more control over which apps to install. A warning is presented for apps that have low reputation, providing users with the option to make an informed decision to authorize or uninstall the app. Decisions are sent back to SophosLabs to improve the quality of the reputation data.
System requirements
Sophos Mobile Security runs on Android devices with an Android version 2.3.3 and higher.
The application must installed through Google Play.
Sending log or trace files through Google Mail
The user can send log as well as trace files to Sophos Support by email. For some Android versions the files are not sent with the email by the Gmail client although they have been attached by Sophos Mobile Security. Please use another email client than Gmail.
Android Backup Service limitations on some devices
The overall use of the Android Backup Service is limited on some devices due to issues with device/vendor-specific implementations. These issues result in generally not restoring any application settings from the Android Backup Service. Therefore, the Sophos Mobile Security settings are not restored either when re-installing Sophos Mobile Security on such a device or installing Sophos Mobile Security on an additional device using the same Google account.
Android devices without the capability to send SMS
Some Android devices (for example Motorola Xoom, Android 3.2, Build Number: H.6.5.17.1) do not have the capability to send SMS although they can receive SMS. For these devices, the confirmation SMS from Sophos Mobile Security after executing a remote command does not work. Furthermore, the Loss & Theft features Remote unlock and Locate at low battery do not work as they rely on the capability to send SMS.
Loss & Theft: Recovering of directory names and file names after wiping the SD card
The Android operating system allows only very limited access to the SD card and its contents. Therefore, the names of directories and files on the SD card may be recoverable using forensic/undelete tools. However, the file contents of the SD card always get wiped depending on the user's settings.
Spam Protection: Quick SMS response dialog appears when a call is blocked
On some older Android versions, Motorola modified the phone app in
a way that the quick SMS response dialog pops up when a call is rejected.
This dialog disappears after a timeout of 20 seconds when no action takes
place. Due to Android restrictions SMSec cannot handle this misbehavior.
On newer Motorola Android devices ( > 4.0) this problem does not occur
anymore.
Web Filtering works only for specific browsers
Due to the architecture of the Android operating systems, the web filtering within Sophos Mobile Security only works for following browsers: the standard browser delivered with the Android OS and Google Chrome. Within Google Chrome, the Web Filtering does not work for Incognito Browsing.
SMS Spam filtering not working anymore on devices with Android version 4.4 or higher
Due to a change of handling SMS in the Android operating system, the Spam filtering is not working anymore and therefore deactivated on Android devices with OS version 4.4 onwards. With Android 4.4 a default SMS app can be defined that exclusively receives / sends SMS on behalf of all other SMS apps. In addition, on some devices (e.g. the Google Nexus 5) Hangouts is the default SMS app and requests to be the standard SMS app every start. Therefore, it is very unlikely that the user would select Sophos Mobile Security as default SMS app. Thus, the feature is deactivated for Android 4.4+ devices.
You can find technical support for Sophos Mobile Security solely by:
Note: The information in this section does not apply to the free version that can be downloaded from Google Play and is operated in un-managed mode by default. Operating Sophos Mobile Security in managed mode is controlled and activated by Sophos Mobile Control and requires appropriate configuration and licensing in Sophos Mobile Control. For further details see http://www.sophos.com/en-us/support/documentation/mobile-control.aspx.
With this release, the newly introduced features - Web Productivity Filtering and Application Reputation - can be fully manged by Sophos Mobile Control 4.0.
Updating from old version in managed mode
During an update from an old version the user may experience an ANR (Application Not Responding) dialog during the first start of Sophos Mobile Security. This results from a high work load caused by an internal data update of Sophos Mobile Security. The user has to ignore the ANR and Sophos Mobile Security will continue as expected.
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