The award was presented to Sophos's co-founder and CEO, Dr Jan Hruska, last night at Jesus College, Cambridge by Stephen Allott, chairman and co-founder of sales consultancy Trinamo Ltd. Sophos is the first company to be honoured with this yearly award.

"It always gives me a feeling of pride when Sophos wins awards from prestigious institutions like this one," said Dr Hruska. "It is a great recognition of Sophos's success."

About the Cambridge University Computer Laboratory Graduate Association
Also known as the Cambridge Computer Lab Ring, the group includes graduates of the Cambridge University Computer Laboratory. The Ring provides information, contacts, help line services and a social and business events programme to members.

The LinuxWorld Product Excellence Awards are divided into more than a dozen product categories, representing major areas of innovation in the Linux and open source community.

"Sophos is very pleased to be named a finalist for LinuxWorld's Best Security Solution category and we look forward to exhibiting at LinuxWorld in Boston next week where we can interact with the Linux and open source community," said Chris Kraft, VP of Product Management, Gateway Technologies at Sophos.

PureMessage for Unix provides enterprises of all sizes with comprehensive protection from spam and viruses at the internet gateway, filtering inbound and outbound messages and enforcing enterprise email policies. Its scalable message processing architecture enables millions of messages to be handled each day.

About LinuxWorld Conference & Expo
LinuxWorld Conference & Expo is the premier event exclusively focused on Linux and open source solutions. As the world's most comprehensive marketplace for open source products and services, LinuxWorld provides business decision-makers with information and resources to implement Linux and open source solutions into business infrastructure and enterprise networks. For more information or to register for the event, visit the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo website at www.linuxworldexpo.com

Virus Bulletin tested 28 different anti-virus products for their detection rates, lack of false alarms, and speed of scanning on the Windows NT platform. Sophos successfully detected all of the in-the-wild and polymorphic viruses with no false alarms, outperforming a number of competing vendors including McAfee.

All Sophos products use the same virus-finding engine, ensuring consistently high detection rates across all platforms.

About the Virus Bulletin 100% award
The Virus Bulletin 100% awards recognise those products best able to detect viruses known to be 'in the wild'. Unlike some other similar-sounding schemes, Virus Bulletin uses the most up-to-date WildList in its tests. This means that products that are 'up with the game' are the ones most likely to be granted VB 100% awards.