Sophos Firewall Reviews

We are a solution provider and this is one of the security solutions that we implement for our clients. The primary use for Sophos XG is to secure the internet for an organization. It does a bit of antivirus scanning, application filtering, web filtering, and normal firewalling. Security, obviously.

Some of our clients also have Sophos UAP and access points are also included in Sophos, which is the same with FortiGate.

Sophos XG is easy to manage. You've got the cloud logging and you can manage all of your Sophos firewalls from one cloud, the Sophos Central Portal.

The most valuable feature is endpoint security. If you want to install antivirus and firewalling on endpoints, then Sophos is the best option.

What I don't like about Sophos is that applying policies can sometimes take longer, and there can even be a bit of a network interruption. With FortiGate, it's just one click and then you go, but with Sophos, sometimes the wheel keeps spinning for several seconds.

The SD-WAN capability is not as good as it is in FortiGate, and is something that should be improved.

I have been working with Sophos XG for approximately two and a half years.

Stability-wise, it's almost as good as FortiGate.

I've been selling FortiGate for 10 years and Sophos for two and a half years. I think that Sophos is just about on par with FortiGate. We just had a small thing with a client, but I don't know if that's really going to be reason enough. In terms of stability, I think they are quite good. The issue we had was the locks, and it was causing slowness or interruptions, but that was really not an issue. It's a small thing.

Sophos XG is very scalable. You can go from small to large-sized use cases.

I think that the technical support is very good, and similar to FortiGate,

I actually dealt directly with a Sophos engineer and I must admit, they've been very fortunate that the guy can help even on the weekends and so forth. I'm very impressed with that.

I primarily work with FortiGate, but I am currently dabbling in OPNSense to see if I can learn it. I've also installed Cisco in the past, as well as Sophos.

Although about 80% of our clients ask for FortiGate, some of our clients ask for Sophos instead. For example, there are some banks and commercial institutions that ask for Sophos.

Sophos is better than FortiGate with respect to endpoint protection.

The initial setup is as easy as it is with FortiGate. These products are definitely easier to install than a solution like OPNsense because it is just a hardware appliance.

The price of this solution is mid-range. Obviously, it will never beat OPNsense because that product is available free of charge. Sophos XG is not expensive for a firewall, especially when you compare it with Check Point. Check Point is a really expensive product.

Sophos XG is a bit more expensive than companies like BitDefender and Kaspersky, but their endpoint software is very good.

The suitability of this product depends on the use case. If somebody wants to have full endpoint protection then Sophos is the best choice. If they just want a normal UTM without endpoint software, then FortiGate is slightly better, but only slightly because of the SD-WAN capabilities. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

This product serves as our current firewall solution, which is a network protection gateway.

This is a very simple solution.

It integrates well with Sophos Endpoint Protection, and we use the two of them to form a holistic security perimeter control. 

Software updates always come with issues. For example, I just upgraded to the next version, 80.5, and it came with VPN issues. It started dropping my VPN users. So, I had to roll back to before the software update. I think that the main area for improvement is the quality assurance of the updates.

The management console is a little bit rigid.

Scalability can be improved.

I think that it performs a little bit slow when it comes to connectivity, and having the speed increased would be better.

We have been using Sophos XG for the past four years.

This is a very stable platform. In the four years that we have had it, it's never gone down.

It is not a very scalable product. I would rate the scalability a seven out of ten because where you order it, it comes with prefixed ports. You will only have perhaps two for the WAN, and then maybe four LAN ports, and one console. In this regard, it's not scalable. 

When you buy it, you can't change the port configuration. In order to get more ports, you may have to upgrade to a bigger firewall.

We have about 130 accounts for approximately 80 employees.

Technical support for Sophos is very good and they have a big presence in South Africa. It uses something called Sophos Central, where support can fix the problem before you, as the user, actually finds it.

It is a very simple and very quick initial setup and configuration. Because it is a next-generation firewall, it does most of the rule development in the background. You just need to set up the basics and start it up.

For what you are buying, it's good value for the money.

Sophos is very good when it comes to pricing. A firewall has a lot of things to look for when you're buying it, including throughput and its features. When we purchased this product, Sophos was the best on the market.

In addition to Sophos, we looked at FortiGate, SonicWall, and Cisco. We were looking for a next-generation firewall, and Cisco was out of range because it was too expensive. We settled on Sophos because we already had the endpoint solution in our environment, and the price was very good as well.

Sophos XG is a firewall that I recommend because it's a very simple firewall. It's not complicated, and a LAN expert can just start using it and learn very quickly. Definitely, its usability is very good, and it's a very robust firewall.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

It can be used as a firewall, SD-WAN enabler, and secure web gateway. You can also use it for unified threat management, email detection, mobile device management, and wireless management. I use it in the cloud and on-premises, and I have its latest version.

It is stable, flexible, and easy to use. It has got a web management portal that can be accessed from anywhere.

I would like to have more artificial intelligence in the web monitoring service that comes with it. It should alert us when particular events happen. It has already got some of that. I know that it is more of a service, and Sophos is already looking at it. It is called SIEM.

I have been using this solution for a few years.

We have roughly 700 users who use this firewall.

I have interacted with them a few times. I am very satisfied with their technical support.

We were using FortiGate.

It is easy to install. I have done the installation in less than a day.

We did it ourselves. We have two people for its deployment. We have one engineer and one admin.

It is not that expensive compared to the other solutions. It is about the same price range as Fortigate, which we used previously. Licensing is on a yearly basis.

I would recommend this solution. We're very happy with the product. It works very well, and we don't have too many issues.

I would rate Sophos XG a nine out of ten.

We use the Sophos XG firewall as part of our security solution.

The first area that needs to be improved is customer support.

If I'm implementing a connection on the DMZ or WAN, I should be able to dive deep into the implementation, specifying what needs to be implemented or not. For example, I should be able to configure specific details for the DMZ, and not have to follow the templates that they provide.

We have had problems with the stability that affected business operations.

We have been using Sophos XG for three years.

The issue of stability is the reason that I'm trying to move away from using Sophos as our firewall. There were times where Sophos randomly cut some users off of the internet, which adversely affected business operations. It is important because our business relies on throughput and service, like the uptime of e-commerce servers.

Scalability depends on the specifications during the time of order, prior to first implementing the firewall. With respect to my organization, scalability has been okay. It comes down to the amount of money that is spent.

We have 1,200 users in the company.

Customer support needs to be improved. The time they take to resolve issues is too long.

The initial setup was straightforward. It took us less than 30 minutes. Normally, it depends on the size of your organization, so for mine, the installation was less than 15 minutes. By 30 minutes I was finished even with the setup and configuration.

For our company, the price was reasonable.

We are now thinking about incorporating the Fortinet next-generation firewall.

My advice for anybody who is considering Sophos is that a business with a lot of throughput and data traffic should look for another firewall.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

For the primary use cases, we use SSL VPN access for rolling remote access. We use web filtering and we use the intrusion prevention that comes with network protection.

The user interface is very user-friendly and very helpful. 

The VPN access for users is also a great thing, especially nowadays when working from home. 

Categorization or uncategorized websites is an area that needs improvement.  

Having a web portal where you could make requests for the categorization of non-categorized items, would be beneficial.

The DLP rules don't cover countries such as Serbia. You cannot make custom rules. That could be added so that we could detect content that is not supposed to leave the company via email, and so that the rules could be customized by the clients.

We only have predefined rules and most of them are not for Serbia or countries from the Region.

We have been using Sophos from the time they acquired Astaro, before that it was UTM, then they released the XG firewall.

We are using the latest version.

It's a stable solution. We have not experienced any issues.

It's a scalable product. In the office, we have four users in our organization.

Our experience with technical support has been positive.

We have support from the local distributor. We have rarely had the need to contact technical support but when we have, we have had quick responses from them.

The initial setup is very straightforward and the implementation takes a relatively short amount of time. The fine-tuning takes a little bit more time but in general, it can be deployed and implemented quickly. 

Also, the upgrades, backups, and recovery are very easy.

We are Sophos partners, we sell them and implement them ourselves.

We only need one engineer to deploy and maintain this solution. If you have a bigger deployment then you need two engineers.

Licensing fees are on a yearly basis.

I can recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The most valuable feature is the VPN aspect. It has been beneficial for my users who work from home. Connectivity and from a security aspect.  The security aspect of this is quite good. It measures up to the standard that I expect.

From a Firewall perspective and then user management, easy to manage and the user experience, profile, are giving me what I am expecting.

During this COVID era, the VPN has really been helpful. We can seamlessly connect to the applications remotely and work from home.

In the Firewall, the Intrusion Prevention System can be improved. Now because COVID has come to stay, people tend to work from home, and cybersecurity has been on the high side. 

It can improve more on the security aspect of this so that it can combat any major threat or common bug. I am not saying that the security has become compromised, as it is usually active, but they can improve on it.

Local and technical support can be improved.

When firmware updates are complete, there were issues with connectivity and VPN users. Recently, I stopped updating the firmware because I didn't want to obstruct the connectivity of the staff working remotely at different locations. 

I have stopped doing any updates until the issue can be addressed.

I have been using Sophos XG for approximately 12 months.

When you compare with Barracuda, Sophos is quite a bit cheaper. 

With Sophos, you can upgrade on what you need and upgrade as time goes on. I think that it's relatively open, compared to other products.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are a solution provider and Sophos XG is one of the security products that we implement for our customers. We always provide them with the latest version.

The number of ports, especially on the entry-level appliances, should be increased.

The price of adding ports should be reduced to make it more competitive.

The vendor needs to create materials to show the differences between Sophos products and those from other vendors.

Network management needs to be included in the package.

As it is now, it only supports ten multiple users, which is something that should be increased.

I have been working with Sophos XG for approximately two years.

This solution is stable.

This is a scalable product and we have approximately 150 users.

We get our support from the local distributor.

Prior to Sophos XG, we used products from Fortinet and Forcepoint. 

The Forcepoint product is doing well. We have a different perimeter firewall for our data center that uses it because we use different vendors for different sites.

This is an on-premises appliance and the installation is straightforward. It can be deployed in less than an hour. However, according to the number of users and the number of ports that will be connected, the design may vary. This makes it difficult to estimate the time required to do a full implementation of the product.

We have four people in charge of maintenance, although they do not work exclusively with Sophos. We have another appliance from another vendor. The entire team, including their manager, is about 10 people.

The price is in the mid-range and it is very good for small to medium-sized businesses. One license opens everything.

Overall, this is a good product and I would recommend it for small to mid-sized customers.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Overall, everything about the solution works well. We haven't had any issues at all.

The features on offer are great. It has pretty much everything we need.

The solution is very user-friendly.

The product is very easy to explore. It has a very good layout.

I need to do a bit more research on the product. I can't think of any features that are missing.

The solution is tied to the US dollar. You need to pay whatever the equivalent is in your own currency, and, if the exchange is bad, it can really add to the cost.

We've been using the solution for three years. It hasn't been an extremely long amount of time.

The stability is great. We don't have any issues. I haven't come across bugs or glitches. There isn't crashing or freezing. It's reliable.

Technical support is quite good. That said, we really haven't had any issues with the product itself.

I used to use Fortinet. That was at a different company, however.

The solution is very straightforward to set up. It's not too complex. Sophos Endpoint is similar in that respect. It's easy to implement.

The pricing is a bit expensive. That is mostly due to the US exchange. If the exchange is bad, it's quite an expensive option for us.

We are Sophos customers. We're just end-users.

We also use Sophos Intercept X and Sophos Endpoint as well.

It's a good option. It's easy to explore and to use. Everything is pretty straightforward, especially if you compare it to other firewalls.

Overall, I would rate it at a nine out of ten. We've been very happy with it in general.