Re: IFS share /QIBM and /QIBM/ProdData/OS400/DirSrv

Instead of matching a pattern on the file contents (which it also does for viruses), it matches the pattern of behavior (for ransomware): reading a file, doing intense mathematical formulas, writing back an entirely new version of the file.

How's that different from a user *wanting* to encrypt stuff? I bet that and maybe creating a ZIP file with many files might trigger false alarms.

While I prefer the Sophos solution, the Cisco product can also monitor for suspicious heuristics.

Translate: "They do guesswork". :-)

I don't know that I need to convince you you're wrong. But I can say from experience that someone in our worldwide organization was hit with a day-zero attack. It took out a number of systems and replicated to multiple countries. The heuristics on their preferred Cisco product weren't turned on. Sophos, on the other hand, was still running on many of our servers and user computers. It stopped it every single time. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. It also never gave me a problem, and I move lots of files around and regularly zip/unzip or encrypt files.

I could get into the fact that, based on the threat level and how well it knows the products involved, it sometimes start's making backups of the files being encrypted. It can let a number of files be encrypted, then prevent any others until a user responds to a prompt from Sophos (completely outside of the software/script in question). I could get into the fact that it evaluates writing activity totally differently based on whether it's firmware, boot sector, system files, or user documents. I could get into the fact that if it sees an entire PC encrypted by unknown software, it prevents that system from connecting to any other. But if you don't want to believe you can get decent protection, don't bother looking at it.

Scoffing at the impossibility of it really gets in the way of the people who are actually doing it.
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