Sophos XGS Reviews

The prominent use cases for Sophos XGS depend on the type of customer. Local governments, schools, production companies, sales companies, and the finance sector use it.

It’s popular because it’s easy to manage, the cloud console is excellent, and it supports VPNs. It can also integrate with endpoints, though this is optional. Regarding threat intelligence, customers in Central Europe often prefer managing their threat hunting rather than using the more expensive service from Sophos. This feature is handy for large international companies with many employees. Threat intelligence requires separate licensing and is optional. Customers can either manage it themselves or purchase the additional service from Sophos, which includes further actions and is more expensive. Smaller companies often don’t have the budget for this.

One area for improvement would be including automatically generated certificates for HTTPS, which was available in earlier versions but might not be in the latest.

I’ve worked with Sophos XGS for over ten years, starting with Astaro and then Sophos.

Sophos XGS is not expensive and is scalable. It can fit small schools and companies with just ten employees, showing its flexibility for different sizes.

Sophos has two levels of support. The first level is qualified but may not handle complex issues well. I usually skip it and go straight to the second level for better results.

Positive

Deployment is quick and easy. Small installations take about three hours, and even remotely if necessary. It might take up to two days for more extensive infrastructures, including initial setup and follow-up checks.

Sophos XGS does use AI, particularly for sandboxing and analyzing suspicious documents in the cloud. It’s practical, as I haven’t had any major security breaches in the past five years.Overall, I’d rate Sophos XGS as nine out of ten. It has improved significantly over the years.

XGS' most valuable feature is ransomware protection. 

In the next release, XGS should include mobile features like two-factor authorization.

I've been using XGS for seven years.

XGS is stable.

XGS is scalable.

Sophos' technical support has degraded in the last couple of years. They seem to need to ask a lot of questions, even with simple problems, and take a long time to provide solutions.

Neutral

The initial setup is simple.

XGS' price could be lower, though it's moderately priced in the market.

I also evaluated SonicWall and FortiGate.

XGS is a perfect product for small and medium businesses. I would rate it as eight out of ten.

It is a firewall appliance that is used to provide security for network infrastructures. We have it deployed at the edge of our network and we also sell it to other clients to protect their network infrastructure. 

This solution is really easy to use and deploy. It has a dashboard where you can see everything going on within your network. There is also a cloud component so if you need to secure your computers or servers, this can be done using Central Intercept X Advances. Everything is connected to their cloud platform where you can manage either your end point solution or your firewalls.

I have been using this solution for five years. 

It is very stable. I have not heard of any issue where clients would have to replace hardware. It's been really stable for a long while.

This is a scalable solution. This does depend on the are different categories of the XGS. The license you buy would be determined by the number of users intended to use it. 

The support team are helpful when you eventually get hold of them which takes a long time. They can improve how quickly you get technical support.

Neutral

The initial setup is straightforward and takes 15 minutes. The time it takes to setup depends on what you're trying to achieve and how complex you want your configuration to be. 

We completed the implementation in-house for our business and for some of our clients. 

We have started seeing ROI using this solution because one of their products helps you to prevent ransomware. It has helped to prevent ransomware from encrypting one of the systems of one of our staff. That is a huge return on investment

The cost is $10,000 for an annual subscription. 

This is a good product for small and medium enterprises. I can't say how it performs in a large environment. It is a very stable solution. Just like every other product, you need to have someone that has the necessary skill set to manage it. Somebody needs to learn how to set it up and configure it depending on the environment.

We use Sophos XGS for web security and web policies, it's our primary solution. authentication VPN site to site, SSL VPNs installations. Sophos Firewall designed its extreme protection IT Rules and policies security level Authentication is good sometimes it's tricky and very helpful. Sophos Firewall delivers advanced threat protection to instantly identify bots and other advanced threats while defending your network from today's sophisticated attacks. current live user activities diagnostics to generate logs and objectionable site restrictions, daily reports are a great solution for the work environment.

With the increase in cybersecurity threats, this solution has helped us at an organizational level. We have always been hit by someone at the end of our desk or hidden somewhere ex:- spoofing attacks, a man in the middle attacks, and ransomware new era of cybersecurity pain full concept, Mail spoof attacks, all these have to improve DMZ and secure the firewall policies and server-client Antivirus solutions. Daily monitoring manually or trusted third-party vendors monitoring tools. finally, we are worried about how strong we are at the cybersecurity level.

This is a great solution for security, authentication, hashing, and encryption level. Sophos is good at ACL rules, Port forwarding, SDWAN route policies, IT Rules and policies as well as Natting rules. It's a reliable product to secure web securities. whenever we want we switch to the ports securely Heartbeat monitoring live user activities is great to execute on a production level. Bandwidth control sometimes referred to as traffic shaping is one of the best firewall features. Link aggregation and SD-WAN (Software-defined Wide Area Network) are great features for businesses that need multiple links to the internet. thank you

There are occasional issues when we update an operating firmware there's some lag time. Updating requires us to reboot the firewall, in this scenario 24/7 organization will be the most effective. In addition, I'd like to see more focus on customer support calls we were waiting for hours to connect with them. In some cases, Sophos's team is extraordinarily helpful to solve any issues in the firewall. Sophos needs to focus on customer support through a chatbot or call management quickly so we can find some help on the client side. Thank you

I've been using this solution for five years. 

The solution is stable despite having to restart when we update. 

The solution is very scalable and we're able to handle all the pressure in our organization. We have over 100 VPNs and it all works well, Authentications, port forwarding, and all kind of security levels are much appreciated. 

Customer support needs to be improved. They're very helpful once you get them on the line but sometimes take up to an hour before we can speak to someone who can fix a problem. when a problem occurs at the production level we freeze and everything goes blank so a faster customer support call is much more appreciated.

Positive

The initial setup is complex. Sophos has some features like rules and policies, NATing, and PATing so deployment might take more time than if we were using an alternate solution. Deployment can take up to two weeks because every policy and VPN requires checking and that takes time. I've been working for the past 10+ years experience in network engineering and firewall configuration so we deployed in-house but we contacted Sophos for assistance when we needed it.

The Sophos or any kind of firewall is worthy to buy when we have dedicated servers and switches to implementation.

There are some very good features in this firewall and also some areas that need improving. I rate this product seven out of 10. 

I use Sophos XGS as an alternative gateway and we are using all the new generation firewall functionalities, such as EPS and antivirus.

We are using the WAF functionalities of Sophos XGS which has helped the organization.

Sophos XGS could improve by having a Network Access Control(NAC). This feature is a basic function in other firewalls and should be added, such as Palo Alto.

The SD-WAN functionality should be reviewed because there are some devices that don't work well. For example, in Palo Alto, the SD-WAN functionality is more efficient.

I have been using Sophos XGS for approximately four years.

Sophos XGS is a stable solution.

The technical support from Sophos XGS is good. We reach out to them if there is a serious problem. We have opened approximately four tickets with them.

I rate the support for Sophos XGS a two out of five.

I have used many other solutions, such as Palo Alto, Fortinet, and Cisco. Sophos XGS rates are at the bottom of the list compared to many solutions.

The initial setup is straightforward.

I would rate the initial setup of Sophos XGS three out of five.

We have a team of three or four people who administer Sophos XGS.

Once you pay for the Sophos XGS hardware there is no license required. There are additional costs if you want the support. We have purchased support for three years.

I rate Sophos XGS a six out of ten.

We are using it as a firewall to protect and control Internet access, as well as control other access like SAP. Some of our employees connect from remote locations, and our server is on-premises. We use this firewall for access control and also for VPN connections.

It's easy to use, and the service is good. If anything goes wrong, their support system is very reliable.

The renewal process for this box is too frequent. We purchased it five years ago, and it's expiring in 2025. So, I feel they expire it too quickly.

In future releases, this solution could have more graphical elements on the dashboard to make it easier to understand. While there are graphics and a good dashboard, there's always room for improvement.

We have been using Sophos XGS for ten years. At that time, it was new. So somebody recommended us to take this. Our service provider recommended it, and that's why we have taken it.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution. We have around 300 end users in our organization. 

The customer service and support has been excellent. 

Positive

We have worked with Cisco and Fortinet Firewalls. It's hard to compare.

Installation and understanding are a bit challenging with Cisco, whereas Sophos is easier to install and use.

We have a FortiGate firewall at another location. We recently purchased it.

The initial setup is very, very easy.

The deployment process took me more than two to three hours, including all the checks. I had a backup of the earlier Sophos firewall, so I just restored it and verified everything.

One person for support and checking, so two in total are enough for deployment and maintenance of the solution.

I would definitely advise to use Sophos. Overall, I would rate the solution a nine 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.

we are using Sophos XGS for full control over our network.

Sophos XGS has improved our organization.

The most valuable feature of Sophos XGS is its ease of use.

The price of Sophos XGS could improve, it is high.

I have been using Sophos XGS for approximately two years.

Sophos XGS is stable.

The scalability of Sophos XGS is good.

We have approximately 10 technicians that know how to use the solution.

The support from Sophos XGS was responsive. They solved the issues we had.

Positive

We have not used another solution prior to Sophos XGS.

The initial setup of Sophos XGS was easy. The time it took for us to implement the solution was approximately one month.

We use a third party with our in-house team to do the implementation. We have 10 workers that maintain the solution.

I rate the return on investment for Sophos XGS a three out of five.

There is an annual licensing fee to use Sophos XGS. It is an expensive solution.

I rate the price of Sophos XGS a four out of five.

We did not evaluate another solution before choosing Sophos XGS.

I rate Sophos XGS seven out of ten.