Sophos responds to website criticism in wake of ransomware attack

Social media users claimed Sophos removed messaging from its website following ransomware attack on the NHS last week

Sophos has responded to criticism levelled at it on social media after it appeared to alter its NHS messaging following Friday's ransomware attack.

Users on Twitter speculated that Sophos had tweaked the NHS page on its website, after numerous NHS Trust's reported serious IT issues at the end of last week.

Tweeters accused Sophos of changing the messaging on its website from "The NHS is totally protected with Sophos" to "Sophos understands the needs of the NHS" over the weekend, supporting the claims with what was said to be a cached version of the Sophos website (pictured).

However in a statement sent to CRN, Sophos chief marketing officer Matt Fairbanks said the website being referred to on social media is a two-year-old landing page that formed part of a marketing campaign.

"The marketers at Sophos got a little ahead of themselves and created the landing page in question two years ago," he said. "This was an orphaned microsite page from a marketing campaign that referred to our total portfolio of products.

"The microsite is not now and never was our primary NHS-related page on our website, which can be found at www.sophos.com/nhs.

"We continuously strive to improve our products, and we put just as much effort into improving our marketing. However, we know that words matter and we'll do better going forwards to remove no-longer-relevant and orphaned pages from our site (we removed any remaining links to the page this week since it was brought to our attention that the page still existed).

"The criticism is legitimate, and we really take it very seriously. We want improvement as much as anyone, and we know our customers help drive that. We are proud of and we value our long-standing relationship with NHS organisations."

A separate cached version of the Sophos NHS page, however, indicates that changes were made over the weekend - removing a paragraph that claims Sophos protects over 60 per cent of NHS machines (pictured).

The snapshot of the Sophos page as it appeared at 2:55 GMT on Saturday, also contains the same "The NHS is totally protected with Sophos" messaging further down the page, which is not on the page as it is currently displaying.

On this point, Fairbanks said: "Small edits were made [to the NHS page] for accuracy and from a sensitivity perspective, not because of anything being factually incorrect."