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Sophos picks up axe again, 'plans to DECIMATE staff'

Insider says 1 in 10 face the chop - though Sophos says overall headcount to rise

Sophos plans to shed 150 jobs as part of restructuring exercise, according to a source who tipped off El Reg.

The security-software maker confirmed to The Register that cuts in some areas of its business were on the cards. But it declined to discuss the specifics of the planned redundancies; for example, it did not say which departments will be affected nor did it comment on the figure supplied to El Reg by our tipster.

However, Sophos did say it will attempt to place people facing redundancy elsewhere in the firm.

The previous job slash happened in November last year, when Sophos said it was cutting 35 roles in some areas of development to focus on growth areas, such as security-as-a-service (SaaS) and unified threat management (UTM).

This time around, Sophos said it was announcing "plans to reduce our staff in certain areas of our business and increase it in others". It said it expected that the overall headcount would actually rise:

At Sophos, we constantly innovate to deliver our customers and partners complete security without complexity, and that means shifting our resources to the highest-growth and most strategic areas of our business.

As a result, today we have announced plans to reduce our staff in certain areas of our business and increase it in others. 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.

In terms of the overall company, we actually expect our staff levels to increase on a year-over-year basis.

The privately held firm employs more than 1,500 people globally, most working in its offices in Boston, USA, and near Oxford in the UK.

Sophos reported sales of $402.9m in the year ending 31 March 2012, up 17 per cent on the year before. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) came in at $107.9m, up 14 per cent year on year, in the infosec firm's last set of accounts, which were released in July 2012. ®

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