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Sophos Control Centre: How to protect computers that are in a workgroup

Issue
How to use Sophos Control Center to deploy Sophos Anti-Virus to computers in a workgroup.

Sophos product and version
Sophos Control Center

Operating system
Windows

What to do

You must work through all of the following steps. Sections 1, 2, and 3 must be performed on every client computer in the workgroup. Section 4 must be carried out on the computer which has Sophos Control Center installed.

1. Create the Sophos user

  1. Go to Windows Control Panel and click on 'User Accounts'.
  2. Select 'Create a new account', call the account 'Sophos' and click 'Next'.
  3. Select 'Computer Administrator'|'Create Account'
  4. Click on the new 'Sophos' account and then select 'Create Password'.
  5. Enter the password details required (make sure you set up and use the same password on all computers).

2. Disable Simple File Sharing (SFS)

  1. Go to Windows Control Panel and select 'Folder Options'.
  2. Click on the 'View' tab.
  3. Scroll to the bottom of the list and deselect 'Use Simple File Sharing'.
  4. Click OK.

3. Open the Windows Firewall ports to allow Sophos to communicate

  1. Go to Windows Control Panel and double-click on Windows Firewall.
  2. On the 'Exceptions' tab, click on 'Add Port'
  3. Call it 'Sophos1', the port number should be 8192 on TCP
  4. Click OK
  5. Repeat the above steps, adding Sophos2 (8193) and Sophos3 (8194)
  6. Enable File and Printer Sharing on the firewall

4. Deploy Sophos Anti-Virus to your computers

  1. Open Sophos Control Centre and click on 'Protect New Computers' on the left hand side of the window.
  2. Keep pressing 'Next' until you are asked for an Administrator account. Now enter:
    • the 'Sophos' account you created above
    • your chosen password
  3. Press 'Next' and finish the wizard once all of the computers have been found.

You should see orange arrows appear on all of the new computers, they should then go green after a short while, then turn to an hourglass and finally just a blue computer. At this stage the computers should start reporting to the Control Centre (it may take 5-10 minutes for all of them to do so).

Technical information
This procedure is required by Windows, because of the way it manages computers in workgroups.

If you need more information or guidance, then please contact technical support.