Sophos Firewall Reviews

We primarily use the solution as our firewall.

I'm able to have very granular control over my organization's input and output data that goes in and out of our networks.

The firewall portion of the solution is the best part The rest is really just fluff. 

The initial setup is straightforward.

We have found the stability to be quite good.

User management is the area that, by far, needs the most work. The way that they try to transparently utilize user groups from the active directory to the Sophos firewall is outdated.

I'd like to see them do a little bit better of a job with the content filtering. It has content filtering, however, it rarely works. Sometimes it just fails altogether. I'd like to see a better job done. 

I'd like to see better reporting. While the logs are great, the reports are not.

I've been using the solution for six years at this point. 

The stability is great. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. It's a reliable firewall. 

The product is super scalable. If I had a giant organization, I'd have no problem putting the Sophos firewall in.

Right now, we have 155 on the solution. That's everyone from support to upper-level management. 

We use it every day.

We just recently upgraded. I have no reason or need to upgrade for years to come and therefore don't plan on scaling anytime soon.

Technical support is fairly good. It's a pain to get ahold of them, however, once you get them, they're very thorough.

The only thing that s not so great is that sometimes they try to force me down to my reseller, whoever their partner is. I always have to make up a lie and say I already tried and only then will they help me. Besides that, it's not bad.

I previously used Cyberoam. We really switched as Cyberoam was bought out by Sophos.

The implementation process was pretty straightforward. Learning the ins and outs was a little complex. How, in terms of just getting it set up, I was able to get it set up in a couple of days.

Overall, the deployment took about three days. My strategy was, basically, going from my old Cyberoam to my new Sophos. I just copied each rule individually and tested them. Then I ran them in sync with each other for a couple of weeks. When I realized there were no problems, I pulled the Cyberoam out.

We have three people on staff that can handle deployment and maintenance responsibilities. I've got a system admin, myself, and a help desk/content specialist.

I did not use an integrator, reseller, or consultant for deployment. I handled the process myself. 

From an ROI standpoint, the product I had before, even though they were basically the same thing, I found I was spending a lot of man-hours with it and calling support a lot and actually having to pay for support on the previous model. 

With this firewall, I rarely have to call support. When I do, it's free of charge. The ROI is 100% there. It might be a little more expensive up front, however, the quality is there for a medium-sized business.

The licensing is based on a multi-year contract. It's a bit higher, in terms of price than other options. The billing process is pretty simple and straightforward. they don't have a complex licensing setup. 

I evaluated all the big players out there before choosing Sophos. I likely evaluated seven different options.

I'm a customer and an end-user.

I'd advise those considering this product to stick with it and stay away from the fluff. For example, the Sophos Anti-Virus is not worth it. 

The firewall is fantastic. Definitely take their firewall courses, as there are going to be a lot of tasks that you feel should be easy and they're not. There's going to be a lot of troubleshooting. I've been working on it for five years and I still catch myself sometimes trying to figure out why a certain rule doesn't work doing this or that. Definitely take the training. I would highly recommend staying away from the other products.

I'd give the product an eight out of ten for a score. It does everything I need it to do. The user interface is very modern. It works. I was able to figure out some very advanced things. Even though it has a modern interface, I like the fact that I can always go into the console and it's a Linux box behind the scene - which is very nice for when you're trying to do very advanced tasks. For the most part, it was plug-and-play. The setup was really easy. The support is fantastic.

I am a system integrator. We integrate SG, XG, and XGS.

We are also deploying it on Azure on-premises for our clients.

Sophos XG is a firewall. It can protect your internal users if it is on-premises. It can publish applications such as websites, it can also protect your internal networks like IPS, and IDS. It provides you with VPN Access, and it gives you reports on the consumption of the internet.

If you have deployed the endpoint between the antivirus in Sophos, it can also communicate with your endpoint and protect your users if infected.

It's a complete firewall solution that has everything.

It is very useful.

It competes with the majority of the market's products, including Palo Alto and Fortinet.

We always strive for more features.

We could see the bandwidth use right away with the prior version, which was the SG version. The current bandwidth consumption is no longer shown in the XG and XGS.

They are nearly a complete solution. However, they are missing this feature with the ability to view the current bandwidth usage. We have requested this, but have not had a reply yet. It was in SG before but it was removed in XG.

We have been working with Sophos XG for six years. 

We started with SG, then XG, and now XGS nine years ago.

It can be deployed both on the cloud and on-premises. 

Sophos XG is very stable. We haven't had a single issue with stability in the nine years we have been using Sophos.

All electric appliances rely on a stable electric current, which requires the use of a UPS, and a backup power supply. The main issue is the stability of the power.

All Sophos appliances are SSD-based, which means the hard drive in the appliance is solid-state.

we have deployed more than 50, 60 for our customers in Kuwait and we haven't had an issue or, any RMA.

When purchasing a firewall, as a customer, you must first plan, consult with your partner(s), and decide on the sizing. If you buy an XGS 230, for example, it can support up to 200 users and 50 VPNs. If you buy the wrong product, you won't be able to scale it up.

You should always size upfront. If you have a hundred users, you buy an appliance that can support 150. The license is the license.

It's all about the hardware. If you purchase small hardware and you know that after one year you're going to have more employees then it is wrong.

It's not a server, where you can just add more drives, It only has expansion units for the network. If you need to add fiber, for example, you can. There are expansion units, but you can't expand the architecture of the firewall.

We have more than 50 customers.

We haven't required any technical support. I have however heard from my peers that they have not had any issues with the customer support.

They have offices in India, Dubai, and even in the United Kingdom. As we are certified Gold partners in Kuwait, we haven't had any issues with the Sophos team. They are quite responsive when you have a tender to submit. I have no complaints at all.

in the past, we also integrated Palo Alto.

The initial setup is easy and straightforward. As certified partners, this is something that we do every week. If the customers provide you with the network details, you can have it up and running in 30 minutes with no issues.

It's a problem if you don't know your firewall, or how to deploy it, or know how to put the proper rule in place. It is very important that in any firewall if the customer doesn't know what rule should be in place, it is possible they will create the wrong rule and expose the network.

You have to have a certified person to maintain the solution. How many you will need depends on the number of customers. If you have a lot of customers, you will need two technical people. It also depends on the size of your business. One is fine but as you grow with more customers, you will need at least two to deploy and maintain the solution.

I don't have any issues with the price. The price varies depending on the market. The price of Sophos in Europe differs from that in our region, GCG, and from that in the United States. You will notice that each region has a different pricing structure. 

Customers will always try to minimize the cost. When compared to other products, Sophos licensing is very affordable.

They have already released the XGS. If you are referring to the previous version, XG. It is still in production and available for purchase. They have already released the XGS, which is the next generation of the XG. It has a more advanced architecture. Now that we have passed XG, there's XGS on the market.

Remember to size your customers. You'll need to know how many web applications you will be publishing, how many end customers the company has, and how many of them will need to connect to the VPN. It's a formula that, based on the data, that will determine which appliance you require. You can start with a little one, but it's best to understand the requirements first.

We are very happy with Sophos products.

I would rate Sophos XG a ten out of ten.

I enjoy synchronized security, where you have to synchronize both the firewall and the endpoint. When I deploy a firewall, I integrate it with the endpoint so that they can send the security heartbeat from the endpoint to the firewall. In the Sophos firewall, there's deep inspection, which works quite well. Sophos has the web application firewall inbuilt. This is unlike other firewalls, where you have to integrate with another standalone web application firewall. Being inbuilt in Sophos, you just have to configure an application so that it's more of a policy, and you're good to go. It's pretty simple in terms of the user. 

We've deployed quite a number for our users and our customers, and the feedback is quite positive in terms of management and also administration.

The technical support is pretty good. 

The initial setup is easy.

There's quite a number of items on offer. When you look at Gartner, it's doing well. The uptake in the market has been wonderful and currently, it's competing with other top firewalls such as Check Point, Fortinet, and Palo Alto.

XG is at its end of life. People are moving to XGS. With those changes on the horizon, a client might end up in, maybe 10 years, having four or five appliances, which they might not use. I don't know what Sophos is doing to maybe change this. Right now, we've moved from XG to XGS.

Another feature, which might be good and which other vendors are maybe exploring is the NAC. Sophos doesn't have a NAC solution. 

Maybe they can improve on their WAF. Currently, they have the inbuilt. 

They could work on their SD-WAN solution. I have seen it. It's not that competitive compared to other vendors. We've had some device issues.

I've been dealing with the solution for the last four years.

In terms of when it's in the network, it's stable compared to other firewalls, where I have had some issues. I had a case with another firewall, which the client changed to Sophos and it was not that stable as the client had to go and actually restart the firewall. The challenge comes in terms of stability when, let's say, the engineer doing the scoping does the round-sizing for the firewall. This causes the IPS to become overloaded or overworked, so it disconnects the traffic at the port level. In terms of stability, I might say sometimes we might experience challenges maybe when the sizing is not done correctly. That's why we might experience that disconnect at the interface level where the internet gets disconnected, however, that's the case of sizing, not the product itself. In terms of stability, it's stable in the network.

In terms of Sophos' support, they have been wonderful. I had a device issue and I found the return policy to be quite simple. 

Their technical support is pretty straightforward. When you raise a ticket, the feedback is immediate, and you are assigned a support person. It's been a wonderful experience.

Even to the end-user, it's a pretty straightforward system that they have. A user would just log into support.id, then key in their credentials and raise a support ticket. It's pretty simple.

I'm also familiar with Check Point, FortiGate, and Palo Alto. We also used to use Sonic Wall, however, we've moved to Sophos.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. It's not overly complex.

I've compared Check Point, CloudGen Network Security, and Sophos XG previously for clients. Not being biased to any vendor, normally, in this region, what normally happens is the budget. You might recommend Check Point to a customer, however, Check Point is a bit expensive, so you might end up losing the deal. What you would recommend, is Check Point as the Quantum, as the firewall. Sophos is doing quite well in terms of the endpoint for the workstations and the servers, the physical and the virtual. Likely it would be a good idea to recommend Sophos Security. That said, if the client has the budget, you'd recommend Check Point as a firewall. It's always good to do a bit of comparison and advise the client as to what is best for them.

We've actually deployed and supported quite a number of the products, from XG105 to XG3430.

Sophos is on-prem mostly, however, now there's another product for Sophos, for the endpoints, which is cloud-based.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten. It's one of the best products. We have deployed quite a number of them - almost 20 - and I've not seen any of my clients complain.

My clients are mostly based in the government. They are my core clients. I install the solution for my clients.

The solution is very easy to use. 

Of course, we have the skills, however, it's very easy for us to deploy the solution. That's one of the valuable features. 

They have a communication between the endpoint and the firewall which is very, very useful for security purposes.

Pricing is now pretty good. They changed the pricing structure a few months ago.

The initial setup is pretty easy.

The integration could be a bit better. They need to allow their solution to integrate with other products and not just other Sophos solutions.

Sophos has a feature that in my opinion is very limited. They don't have enough VPNs on their models. They have the XG 750, which is a sizeable appliance. On those models, they used to have not enough VPNs. They always were short on that area. 

Pricing used to be very bad, however, they've adjusted their strategy recently. 

The product needs to improve its marketing in Mexico. It's not a well-recognized product in our country.

The solution's technical support is very bad.

There is an overall lack of documentation in relation to features and capabilities. We need these to help explain aspects of the solution to our clients. 

I've used the solution since around 2014. I have about six years of experience at this point. It's been a while. I've definitely worked with the product in the last 12 months.

The solution is quite stable. There are no bugs and glitches. It doesn't crash and freeze. It's quite reliable. We don't have problems with it.

The solution is very scalable. It is not a problem. Sometimes we have issues when we are trying to do something with a different traditional version of hardware as sometimes the new hardware has more ports. However, if we are talking about scalability in a huge customer, we can do it very easily. 

Mexico is very different than other countries and continents as here, when we say it's a big customer, we are talking about 2,000 to maybe 3,000 users. There aren't too many large-scale operations in the country. However, in general, for our area, we tend to deal with large-scale companies.

For a company that has maybe 1,000 users, Sophos seems to work very well. We have one operation with 10,000 endpoints and it is working quite well.

Technical support from Sophos is very bad.

Sometimes we lose a project due to the fact that we need to solve some issues or answer questions. Things that may be technical but also involve the administrative side. I'm talking about licensing and the capabilities of the feature. We need some documentation, something we can show clients. They can better in those cases. They can either help us or supply us with what we need. 

In response time, they are terrible. In the area of technical knowledge, they are getting better, however, they aren't where they need to be. Right now, we are not satisfied with the level of support provided.

The initial setup is not complex. However, here in Mexico, it's very complex to sell the product. The brand is not as well known.

That said, the process is pretty straightforward. 

The deployment times vary. It depends on the end-user and what they need. Sometimes, it's easy as they don't have too many policies. The more policies they have, the longer it takes.

In other cases, clients may have a lot of VPNs. We have to work on those VPNs, and we have to do a lot of routing. However, that depends on the customer. Not all are like that.

For one appliance, you just need one person for deployment and maintenance. If we are working a lot of VPNs, we would have to use more people. We need to involve maybe two or three individuals and re-apply the configuration in that case. 

We handle the installation process ourselves. We do not need the assistance of consultants.

The pricing has recently changed on Sophos. Their licensing and cost structures are much more clear now. It's much better than it was.

Clients, in many cases, evaluate for Check Point, Forcepoint, and sometimes Fortinet. Occasionally, they may look at SonicWall, or Palo Alto however, the others are the main big competitors. 

Palo Alto is very expensive as are Check Point and Forcepoint. That's why we sometimes win the projects. We find Fortinet, is very, very hard to beat as they have a lot of market share, have a lot of marketing. Sophos doesn't have that presence, that marketing. Also, when you have to think about prices, Fortinet gives customers everything and it's hard to beat.

The biggest issue I've found with Sophos is the small number of VPNs that we can do compared to a similar appliance with Fortinet or in the same level center. In fact, many other brands offer more VPNs than Sophos.

I'm a Sophos reseller.

We use multiple versions. We have worked with XG 460 and XG 135 and some others -such as XG 230. In those cases, sometimes it has been Rev 1 and in other cases Rev 2 in terms of the hardware versions.

I mostly work with on-premise deployments. The only item I have installed in the cloud is an email solution by Sophos.

I'd recommend the solution to other organizations. Overall, I would rate it at a nine out of ten.

Sophos XGS is a unified threat management solution that combines features such as routing, access management, firewall, threat management, and URL filtering for sandboxing. It serves as a security appliance with multiple capabilities.

The valuable features of Sophos XGS include network protection, web protection, application control, intrusion detection, and iCentral orchestration. These features are beneficial for the product's security posture.

The solution could improve by using fewer hardware resources compared to other products like Palo Alto, which has better performance. 

Additionally, better integration of AI and machine learning for predictive analysis of potential threats could be beneficial. 

The technical support also needs improvement, including a better ticketing system and faster response times.

I have been using Sophos XGS firewall for more than 15 years, with approximately twelve years of precise usage.

I would rate the stability of Sophos XGS as a six out of ten. There have been observations of downtimes compared to other devices, and it doesn't perform as well as competitors like Palo Alto or Check Point.

Sophos XGS has scalability issues as it doesn't have features like cascading. Instead, it requires new devices to scale, unlike Palo Alto which allows adding devices to a pool.

The technical support is quite poor and needs significant improvements in response time and quality, especially for medium and small enterprises. It seems other brands face similar issues, but the costs rise for premium support, which is challenging for smaller entities.

Neutral

The initial setup of Sophos XGS is simple compared to other firewalls.

The pricing for Sophos products is considered high. The pricing model needs to be more flexible, catering differently to sectors like education, which might not require as high a price point.

I can recommend Sophos XGS for small to medium companies and the education sector. It is less ideal for enterprises with very high-security needs. Organizations with sensitive data should consider alternatives like Palo Alto or Fortinet.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We give both endpoint and firewall together.

We have a set of customers who understand Sophos very well. Once they achieve all the security functions and parameters they want, they are more secure. Many customers who previously used different endpoint and firewall solutions now benefit from synchronized functionality with the complete Sophos suite. So, they become more secure, which is more important.

The security heartbeat feature and MDR are the best for customer security.

The functionality of SD-WAN compared to other boxes is lacking. Certain aspects need improvement, particularly enhancing capabilities like SD-WAN. We should also focus on enhancing XDR and NDR functionality in the firewall boxes and provide more threat protection alerts to users.

I've been working with Sophos for more than 15 years.

The technical team never disappoints us in providing solutions. They give us timely and nice follow-up.

Positive

Many of them were using a different endpoint security and a different firewall. But now, with Sophos, they have better security.

The pricing is competitive, and it's a win-win situation for both partners and customers.

In the financial market and banks, other security appliances are more popular than Sophos.

We highly recommend Sophos XGS.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

I use the solution in my company as an edge device on our network.

The solution's most valuable feature stems from its ability to protect our organization's web servers.

In Sophos XG, the throughput for larger networks is an area of concern where improvements are required.

I hope the product comes up with some better prices and offers for the tools provided to academic institutions.

I have been using Sophos XG for two years.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

There are around 200 to 300 users in our institution.

Though our institution plans to increase the solution's use, we are unsure about the vendor we want to approach.

I rate the product's initial setup phase a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one means it is a difficult process and ten means it has an easy setup phase.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The solution can be deployed in two to three days.

The product is expensive.

My company considers Fortinet as an option against Sophos XG.

The product has improved network security for all the networks in my organization. The product also offers endpoint security since my organization has been using the anti-virus software from Sophos for the past ten years.

Sophos XG's interface is very user-friendly.

The performance of Sophos XG's VPN to meet the organization's remote access needs is an area that cannot be discussed due to security concerns. Though the product can meet our organization's current requirements, we are considering alternate solutions since we have plans to improve our network.

The reporting and analytics functionalities helped identify security incidents in our company.

I recommend the product to those who plan to use it because it is easy to manage and solve network-related problems.

I rate the product a seven out of ten.

All security solutions are the same. It depends on the size of the network and license. They have the same features. Brands provide extreme protection.

The solution is expensive.

I have been using Sophos XGS for four years.

The product is stable.

The solution is suitable for small and medium businesses.

Customer support is great.

Positive

The initial setup is easy and takes around 30 mins to complete.

The product’s pricing is average compared to other solutions.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

The product’s most valuable feature is the user management system.

The product's technical support services could be better. 

We have been using Sophos XG for three to four years.

I rate the product’s stability an eight or nine out of ten.

We have 15 to 20 Sophos XG users. I rate its scalability an eight or nine.

We do not receive enough technical support services from Sophos XG.

Neutral

The initial setup was complicated because we didn’t have executives with proper expertise. It took us two months to complete.

I rate Sophos XG’s pricing a seven out of ten.

I rate Sophos XG an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution as a firewall. 

We have multiple clients. The use case is based on their requirements, for example, as a site-to-site VPN or maybe as an FSL VPN for end users to promote the network access of company systems. Apart from that, it is used for web filtering and URL blocking. Apart from that, it's on a regular day-to-day basis used as a firewall.

It covers most areas that are needed.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The solution is scalable. 

It's stable. 

We've had issues with support. If they improved on the support part, that would be great.

They should customers who are facing issues with their product reviews; they found bots in it. If they can do their proper research and use the user analysis and testing, that would greatly help the clients.

The software release has been giving us problems.

Other firewalls provide better reporting. We need admin and activity logs to be populated for the firewall. 

For the Sophos XGS, I've been working with it for the last four years. Overall, for firewalls in general, I've been working with solutions for more than ten years.

The solution is stable. We haven't really had any issues until a bug hits the firewall. 

We are the service provider to the client, so we have a total of 28 people, excluding the team lead and the presale technical support or maybe a presale technical person. They are working directly on Sophos XGS. e tend to deal with enterprise-level customers. We don't have small-scale organizations under our portfolio. This solution is best suited for mid-range companies and larger. 

The solution is pretty scalable. I'd rate it a three out of five in terms of ease of scalability.

Support has been very poor.

Neutral

We have three major products, which we offer to clients. They are Palo Alto, Cisco ACI, and Sophos XGS.

There are many major differences between Sophos and Palo Alto. This product is not comparable to Palo Alto right now. Maybe the basic models of the Palo Alto can be compared with the Sophos XGS firewall, however, not the higher-end ones. Palo Alto is much more advanced. 

The solution is straightforward to set up. It is not overly complex.

How long it takes to deploy depends on how the implementation is requested. It won't take more than one hour if it is a basic implementation like setting up the firewall with ISP connections and all those things. However, if it is a complete setup with implementations, other tests, and all those things, it takes around six to seven hours.

After the installation, we do the software updates periodically along with the model which the client has purchased Apart from that, we also do the maintenance of the various policies and other configurations. We do make changes to the firewalls based on changing industry standards, et cetera.

I'd rate the ease of implementation a four out of five. 

If the customer requests assistance with the initial setup, however, we will provide an engineer to them. They'll come to the implementation site and assist.

I don't take care of the licensing part. There is a separate team.

We are a Sophos Gold partner. 

We have multiple firewalls on multiple OS versions. Basically, we do have two major pieces of software installed in the firewall, which are 1854 MR4 and the latest release, 1801.

There are multiple criteria when making a decision about whether to go with Sophos or maybe another firewall. It depends on the client's requirements as well as their budget. 

I'd rate the solution five out of ten.