The Challenge

Guiding users through the complexities of cloud network security

Sophos is a global leader in advanced cybersecurity solutions, including managed detection and response (MDR) and incident response, with a broad portfolio of endpoint, network, email, and cloud security technologies. As one of the largest pure-play cybersecurity providers, Sophos defends 500,000+ organizations and 100 million+ users globally.

Sophos’ Firewall platform is a flagship product line, safeguarding customers’ data from active adversaries, ransomware, phishing, malware, and more.

Sophos’ challenge was to guide users through the complexities of firewall configuration, deployment, and maintenance. Accurate configuration was vital, as adversaries only needed to be lucky once to bypass a customer’s firewall and gain access to sensitive data, networks, and devices. Many customers relied on Sophos’ technical support, as they lacked the expertise and engineering resources of a dedicated in-house security operations center to manage the firewall implementation.

This resulted in a high volume of support inquiries about firewall implementation and deployment for new customers.

Sophos was already a satisfied Whatfix customer, using its DAP to manage internal change for its salespeople on Salesforce, helping to reinforce the learning provided during initial training for all Salesforce end-users.

The results were exceptional – reducing IT support tickets by 12,000 annually, saving 1,070 hours on employee training and support-related time, and engaging Sophos’ salespeople with 116,000+ in-app smart tips interacted with in the first year of its Whatfix implementation.

The Solution

“Sophos Assistant” provides in-app, contextual guidance in the moment of need for its Firewall customers

Whatfix provided interactive in-app guidance and contextual self-support to thousands of Sophos Firewall customers, which was launched as “Sophos Assistant” and provided a self-help overlay on its web admin console UI.

Continuous guidance at the moment of need allowed technical and less technical security teams to quickly get answers to their questions and rapidly overcome problems with deployment configuration and change management.

Step-by-step instructions (Flows), pop-ups, and a self-help knowledge repository (‘Sophos Assistant’) were integrated inside Firewall’s UI, with approximately 700 links to Sophos Firewall-related help and support content.

Last year alone, over 50,000 in-app Flows were played, and support documentation was referred to 34,000+ times. A Sophos customer survey discovered that 87% of its Firewall users found the in-app guided Flows helpful.

Last year alone, Whatfix guidance deflected 10% of Sophos’ Firewall support tickets, equal to a savings of $390,000 annually based on the unit cost of an individual support call. This translates into a complete ROI of its Whatfix investment after only six months of deployment.

Case deflection was just one of the advantages of this forward-thinking strategy.

Whatfix Customer Success was instrumental in this implementation – as was the Whatfix Community, which provided another valuable source of innovation.

In time, Sophos will roll out a Center of Excellence to help accelerate the use of Whatfix across other security applications.