Sophos confirms more job cuts as it looks to refocus on ‘highest growth’ areas of its business

Security software developer Sophos is preparing for another round of job cuts as it looks to shift resources to its “highest-growth” and “most strategic” business endeavors.

The Register reports that 150 people will lose their job as a result of the restructuring exercise, although a company spokesperson wouldn’t confirm the number for TNW.

“As you can imagine, we cannot comment on specific figures or departments, as we’re currently in discussion with those affected employees, some of whom may shift into other roles,” the spokesperson added.

It’s not all bad news for the company, however. Sophos says that it will be reducing staff numbers in specific departments, but increasing them in others. Staff levels will actually increase on a year-over-year basis, so perhaps there’s some hope for those employees whose positions are currently in jeopardy.

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“While it is difficult to make any reductions in our team, we are confident these actions will help to drive our long-term success, and allow us to drive greater value for our customers and partners,” Sophos said in an earlier statement.

It follows a similar round of job cuts in September last year, when 35 employees were expected to lose their jobs.

Sophos protects over 100,000 businesses and 100 million users with a range of endpoint, encryption, email, Web, network security and Unified Threat Management (UTM) systems.

The company is understood to employ more than 1,700 people worldwide and is co-headquartered in Oxfordshire in England and Massachusetts in the United States.

The company released a security threat report last December which re-emphasized the threat from Android and Mac malware, showing a renewed interest in platforms aside from Windows.

Sophos went as far as to call Android “today’s biggest target,” highlighting fake apps that secretly send expensive messages to premium rate SMS services as just one example.

It follows a rather peculiar mix-up in September, where Sophos software began identifying some of its own binaries as malware. The issue has since been resolved.

Image Credit: ALEXANDER JOE/AFP/GettyImages