Sophos: the early years

Graham Cluley
Graham Cluley
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It’s Sophos’s 25th birthday, which seems as good an excuse as any to take a look back.

Jan Hruska and Peter Lammer, the two founders of Sophos, met in Oxford in the mid-1980s. Viruses weren’t really a problem back then, although a handful did exist. Interested in technology, they chose to work together and formed a company called Sophos. (The name, by the way, stems from Ancient Greek meaning “Wise or Learned” – in modern Greek it reportedly means “Smart Ass”).

(Yes, I know they look like a pair of private detectives from a 1970s TV show, but that’s how people dressed in the mid-1980s, okay?)

The two started working together, based in a semi-detached house in Kidlington, Oxford. It was just the two of them, a grand piano, and a German Shepherd dog.

Their first venture, however, wasn’t anti-virus software as you might expect.

Instead, they created a “portable” computer called the AC-86. It was no larger than many of today’s…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

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