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F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs Sophos Cybersecurity as a Service comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), WAN Optimization (4th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (3rd), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (18th)
F5 Distributed Cloud Services
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
CDN (6th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (16th), API Security (6th)
Sophos Cybersecurity as a S...
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
AWS Marketplace (62nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

CDN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
F5 Distributed Cloud Services2.4%
Cloudflare16.4%
Akamai12.6%
Other68.6%
CDN
AWS Marketplace Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Sophos Cybersecurity as a Service0.2%
47Lining Enterprise PaaS- Adoption Catalyst0.4%
Alt/Finance - Crystal & Rhinestone Bag Index (CRI)0.4%
Other99.0%
AWS Marketplace
 

Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal - PeerSpot reviewer
General Manager at bKash Limited
Advanced protection has secured critical web workloads and provides clear traffic visibility
From a security perspective, there remains a security loophole, as some browsers in the market can bypass the Turnstile solution, which requires approximately 40 seconds to do so. From a performance perspective, this is acceptable. We also tried Google reCAPTCHA, and that can also be bypassed. From a security perspective, I would say neither solution is completely secured. Regarding uptime, we have faced a couple of incidents due to Cloudflare in recent years, so I cannot say we receive 100% uptime for our region. We sometimes face challenges, including downtime and other issues. As a result, we are not receiving 100% uptime from Cloudflare's solution. Since most of our customers are in this region, we need alternatives. We need something more competitive than Cloudflare. Unfortunately, in Bangladesh, Cloudflare has three points of presence already, and we cannot find any other solution provider in Bangladesh as an alternative, which presents another challenge. Competitor solutions have more attack signatures, which ensure better security compared to Cloudflare's predefined configurations. Customers do not have options to modify any configuration parameters in Cloudflare, whereas other competitor solutions, such as F5 Distributed Cloud, allow customers to tune configurations according to their requirements. Cloudflare could improve in this area. Additionally, regarding visibility, Cloudflare has static visibility, but they could adopt dynamic graph features for their customers.
Mohan Janarthanan - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions
Centralized security has protected APIs and optimized multi‑cloud traffic management
F5 Distributed Cloud Services has been used for two years for DDoS protection, and there is a particular feature called API protection. Within API protection, there is malicious user mitigation, which is one particular technology that has been implemented. This is a kind of advanced bot attack prevention. Malicious user mitigation is an AI/ML-based technology that was introduced by the F5 team, and this particular MUG protects rate limiting. If some users are having anomaly detection or someone is trying to do a bot attack, it will create a CAPTCHA challenge for that particular user alone and not for all users. For example, if someone is trying to act as a rogue, it will create a CAPTCHA challenge in the backend system on that particular system, so they cannot try again and again at the same time. It is for a concurrent session, and it will give the CAPTCHA challenge. This MUG, malicious user mitigation, prevents bot attacks. F5 Distributed Cloud Services includes the real-time intelligence feature, which helps with threat response strategies from a threat intelligence perspective. For example, if there are geo-restrictions or geo-based restrictions, sometimes people may come in through proxy-based servers, and it will prevent that. The load balancing feature optimizes application performance. Observability is the basic piece where F5 got introduced. This observability piece provides end-to-end visibility on the application performance. It gives complete end-to-end visibility across network latency and application performance issues. Sometimes when it is getting more than 200 pages, it throws errors such as 300, 400, or whatever has been configured, including 500 errors. F5 Distributed Cloud Services has helped improve traffic management efficiency. Most applications are hosted in the Check Point and F5 firewall, F5 web application firewall, where applications and traffic management can be accessed in a single dashboard. Automated threat detection is a basic feature of F5 Distributed Cloud Services meant for that purpose. There are two scenarios with automated threat detection, which is provided by F5. It is a completely machine learning solution that came from the bot defense, and it automatically protects against sophisticated attacks.
Vikas-Gupta - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at Eon Networks
Automated threat response has ensured uninterrupted operations and provides clear 24x7 security visibility
One feature which we would like to have in the product is the inventory. For example, if I have the agent installed on each machine and server, why can't we fetch the inventory details from the console? If you look at the competition products such as CrowdStrike, they give clear visibility into what software is installed, what legitimate tools are installed, and what software is not even licensed or may not be secure to install. Those things are reported back to the concerned team, maybe the systems teams, and they can use it brilliantly. Unfortunately, Sophos Cybersecurity as a Service doesn't provide that kind of visibility into what software or tools are installed on a particular system. There is a feature which requires running what you call an XG script to fetch those kinds of details. However, it is not on the GUI as other competitor companies are providing. That is the one feature we really miss. In terms of service and support, I don't think there is an issue because it is already a brilliant five-star service support. The visibility feature that I already mentioned is the only primary feature which we are missing. The rest is absolutely fine. I don't think there is anything else which should be there.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Cloudflare DNS is widely used, and it's good for websites. If we use Cloudflare DNS and update one record, it updates in their office instantly."
"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."
"It's a great product because it's scalable, has great coverage, and is mature with good defenses against DDoS attacks."
"It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls."
"DDoS protection is this product’s most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."
"Cloudflare has many features."
"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."
"F5 is known for being the best load balancer in the market. Customers with an existing module can easily adopt additional modules without investing in new hardware."
"Elastic environments are the most valuable features because I can pull these apps and migrate the on-premises environment to the Distributed Cloud environment, and this capability is very strong and the security regarding the apps is really very powerful."
"F5 Distributed Cloud Services is the market leader in load balancers and manages traffic really well."
"The main benefit is Web App Security, offering a complete security package from DDoS to web application firewall, API protection, and bot mitigation."
"Technical support from F5 is good compared to Cisco and HP."
"In a multi-cloud or distributed cloud, there are many protection possibilities from data to web application or API protection, including bot mitigation."
"F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides a single unified console for security operations, network operations, and DevOps across all environments."
"Since the day we started using Sophos Cybersecurity as a Service MDR, there has not been a single incident."
 

Cons

"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."
"Regarding uptime, we have faced a couple of incidents due to Cloudflare in recent years, so I cannot say we receive 100% uptime for our region."
"The Always Online feature has room for improvement. It seems to work sometimes and not others even with the pro version."
"The tool needs to improve caching of servers. The product needs to include PFX certificate as well."
"Cloudflare's free plan is limited to 5,000 records for their free plan. They should increase that. For example, if I create a domain called abc.com and a subdomain called a.abc.com, my record count will be two. I can make a maximum of 5,000 subdomains. However, if we use our own DNS hosted on another provider, there is no limit. Their free plan also lacks name server customization."
"The product needs to improve its automation."
"Latencies are always a problem."
"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."
"The worst experience is that with so many solutions available, it is very complicated to know all of the solution modules, and the offers from F5 Distributed Cloud Services are vast."
"Last year there was a downtime of 30 minutes across the cloud distributed console, and that was the only impact observed."
"The pricing could be adjusted to better meet the needs of typical customers in regions like Poland, where the product is considered too expensive."
"For small players, it is completely not worth it."
"For small players, it is completely not worth it."
"The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF. There are some problems, mainly from the perspective of implementation and customer expectations, which sometimes differ from reality."
"The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF."
"Unfortunately, Sophos Cybersecurity as a Service doesn't provide that kind of visibility into what software or tools are installed on a particular system."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"The price is reasonable."
"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Construction Company
43%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Insurance Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise26
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Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare?
The tool's pricing is moderate. I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expens...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
F5 Distributed Cloud Services is affordable. I think it is very affordable. I do not think it is expensive.
What needs improvement with F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
I need to think about this for the future. F5 Distributed Cloud Services needs to create links with Amazon and Google...
What is your primary use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
I collect reviews for F5 Distributed Cloud Services and F5 Silverline Managed Services. I work with F5 Distributed Cl...
What needs improvement with Sophos Cybersecurity as a Service?
One feature which we would like to have in the product is the inventory. For example, if I have the agent installed o...
What is your primary use case for Sophos Cybersecurity as a Service?
Sophos Cybersecurity as a Service product name is MDR, and we started using it from last year only. It has been one y...
What advice do you have for others considering Sophos Cybersecurity as a Service?
The enhanced threat hunting and forensics provided by Sophos Cybersecurity as a Service have significantly helped my ...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

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