WatchGuard Firebox Reviews

In regards to price and technology, it's a great solution.

I like that this product has very few issues.

The only downside is that it is missing an API, that you can use to easily collect information from it. Also, everything is proprietary with the WatchGuard software and that is a bit of an issue.

The API connection would be a very big improvement to get information from the system or to actually configure it with its own dashboard, for example.

Providing additional features would give it a more up-to-date management interface. They have only just entered the cloud since last year which puts them behind compared to other competitors, such as Fortinet, who has the advantage over that, but they have a disadvantage where they have several zero-day attacks on their devices.

I have been using WatchGuard for six or seven years.

Stability is the most valuable feature of this solution.

It's a very scalable solution, but we are not using it in a very large environment.

We use this solution because they have a very good support team. They are very knowledgeable about ways of implementing this solution in our industry.

Technical support is good.

The initial setup was straightforward.

It's fair pricing, but it could always be reduced.

I would suggest comparing the features of the competitors based on data consumption because that's where Firebox is winning.

Overall, we are quite happy with the Firebox solution and we have not seen any issues so far. This is why we are using it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We have got WatchGuard Firewalls. So, we use their EDR, which is a part of the security package that they provide us.

We use this solution for additional protection and response. We use it in combination with the antivirus that we provide to our clients. We have the latest version of this solution.

The protection that it provides from ransomware is valuable. The awareness that it has is also valuable. 

It didn't have a central console earlier, but now it has a central console, which is pretty good.

It can have a couple of false positives, but after you add them to your allow list, it works fine.

It could have better Mac support. I am pretty sure it doesn't have much support for Mac. It can be installed on a Mac, but it is not that good.

I have been using this solution for probably about a year.

It is stable.

Its scalability is really good. You can scale up or scale down depending on the number of users. 

We have over 200 clients of this solution. We have plans to increase its usage. We'll be deploying it for other clients to whom we provide our services.

They provide very good support. I am definitely satisfied with their support.

It is straightforward. It doesn't take long.

We evaluated a couple of other options such as SentinelOne and Palo Alto EDR Edition. We went with this solution because it is inbuilt with the network security routers that they provide. It is like an all-in-one sort of bundle system, and that's why we chose it.

I would rate WatchGuard Threat Detection and Response a nine out of ten. It is pretty good, and I am satisfied with it.

The solution is lacking a professional website, they should be updated more often.

I have used the solution for five years. 

We found no bugs with the operation of the solution. 

There are no problems with the technical support. If a problem occurs it gets resolved immediately with our technical support partners.

The initial setup is simple and understandable.

I find the solution to be very affordable.

My advice for people that wants to implement the solution is that it is very good, you get value for money, and you will be well protected. Additionally, you should make sure the implementation is done correctly and the configuration is well defined.

I rate WatchGuard Firebox a nine out of ten. 

We use it to meet our compliance.

It is something that we need for compliance, and it has been useful. Their support staff is also amazing.

They need to stop the VLAN limitation. They have a VLAN limitation on the size of their boxes. It is the worst thing ever. They basically sell their boxes by the size and the number of VLANs it can handle, which is a real issue. You spend a couple of thousand dollars for a firewall, and you can only do 30 VLANs, which is extremely silly, as a matter of fact.

It would be really great to have something for easier mass rule changes. It also needs a drag-and-drop function so that you don't have to constantly duplicate firewall rules. It would be nice to have such a feature because you got one WatchGuard, and you want to mirror its config and change a couple of things in another one and move some things around. It is not as easy as you would necessarily think.

It is kind of expensive, and its pricing can be a little better for sure.

I have been using this solution for a couple of months.

Its stability is good.

It is not very scalable. If you need more than 30 VLANs, you got to upgrade to the next biggest box. You have to change the hardware box and swap the boxes.

Their tech support is great.

We used a different solution. We switched because the other company was unethical. They did some unethical things that we weren't too happy with.

It is easy. The GUIs of WatchGuard System Manager and WatchGuard are different. You have to know where to go and look in both places to set them up.

We have four admins in my company for its deployment.

It is kind of expensive. I buy it on the appliance. I always buy three-year total security.

I would recommend this solution. I would rate WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution to protect our hardware.

The pricing of the solution is okay. It's not the most expensive option.

This product may do well outside of the Chinese market.

This isn't very popular in China. It doesn't offer the best protection and it's incompatible with a lot of China's websites. It makes a lot of mistakes when it is detecting items as it's not recognizing items correctly.

It has the functional WebBlocker and the server is not local. Sometimes the performance is bad we'll get pop-ups saying "the server is not available". I'm not sure if users outside of China have such an issue, or if it's just due to the fact that we have a unique web experience in the country. The solution just doesn't fit well here.  

The performance could be a bit better.

I've been working with the solution for almost ten years. We have three generations of WatchGuard under our belt.

We've had issues with unstable network connections. It's hard to say if this was caused by a bug or an internal issue. It seems to depend on the network environment if it is stable or not. There just seems to be some limitations.

The scalability seems to have some limitations. We've had issues with performance, and that might affect scalability. I'm not sure.

IN China, the company doesn't really have any presence and so there isn't really technical support we can connect with. There is only an agent that is present, and they haven't been too helpful in the past.

I don't recall how the initial setup was. I can't recall if it was difficult or straightforward.

The pricing is likely similar to Cisco's Firewall. It's not the cheapest option. It has a moderate price tag.

I'm not sure if I would recommend the product. My experiences are based on what we've seen in terms of response to our network environment. Maybe other companies have a good international network and maybe they would have not this issue. It's hard to say. In any case, we've had issues.

Overall, I would rate the solution at a seven out of ten. Maybe they shouldn't be in the Chinese market.

We use WatchGuard Intrusion Prevention Service to secure our servers. It's usually deployed to protect the whole network and the service.

It works right out of the box. You just have to enable it and you can start working. I have worked with other firewalls as well. With other solutions, you have to do a lot of tweaking. WatchGuard is pretty simple to use and easy to pick up.

It's pretty simple. It's very user friendly. I don't really see a way to simplify it further.

I have been using this solution for more than four years.

It's definitely stable. Sometimes there are some issues, but they usually get fixed with the updates — it automatically updates.

In terms of scalability, the interface and everything remains the same. If you go for a very small device or even a very large device, the user fee and the user experience is the same. So, obviously, you should go for a large device. At any time, if you are willing to upgrade, if you want to scale up, then you can just buy a new device and deploy it. The best thing is that you can just migrate the same configuration from a small device to a larger employee's device.

Regarding technical support, they could use more engineers. There is less support from engineers and they give you less time. There is always room for improvement regarding the support.

The initial setup is very straightforward. It can be deployed within three to four hours.

The price of WatchGuard Intrusion Prevention Service is pretty reasonable compared to similar solutions. The pricing is pretty competitive.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of seven. If they made it more stable and improved customer support, I would give them a higher rating.

It is mostly for small to medium-sized businesses. Usually, large organizations have different requirements and they look for different kinds of products. 

Our company routinely deals with credit card numbers in transactions and we use WatchGuard to protect our clients' information. 

The most valuable feature is the protection that it offers.

The analytics are important because if there is an abnormality then it provides that information to us.

The ease of detecting where an issue is should be improved. It would be helpful if when an issue is detected, the system can send us an SMS message to our phones. This would allow us to immediately respond.

I have been working with WatchGuard since 2015, although we only implemented the Threat Detection and Response earlier this year.

Technical support is good. Our level one support in the country is near our office and when we have an issue they immediately respond.

We have had no issues with deployment because it can be pushed to the client.

The pricing is competitive.

When we implement a new product such as this, we start with a PoC. We ask our vendor to provide a demonstration and then we use it in our environment. This allows us to test each of our scenarios. My advice to others is to follow this approach whenever they want to use a product. Do the testing before they buy it.

Every product has it's weaknesses. Just because it benefits one company, doesn't mean that it benefits another. This is why testing is important.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I'm deploying the WatchGuard Firebox for many of my clients, and they all stay satisfied with the product. The primary reason as a common request from most of the users is to protect the environment from the outside network attacks. It is popular because of its security layers dependencies and its great performance.

The proxy policy and packet filtering templates make it very clear while I am configuring the Firebox for customers. Also, the variety of actions that are designed per kind of packet payload are dependent on the protocol's payload.

The Firebox is developing most of my client's infrastructures, starting from internet access and its amazing protocol-oriented proxy policies. It also has a deep understanding of the packets, meanwhile the most powerful HTTPS inspection features.

It is supported by the VPN, either Branch office or mobile users.

In addition to its impressive extraordinary DNS security, it has an access portal, which is a feature for publishing web applications, cloud applications, or even publishing internal RDP and SSH. 

https://www.watchguard.com/wgrd-resource-center/2019-nss-labs-ngfw-group-test

The traffic management feature is very flexible and it let you manage varieties of our customer's needs as it is working per policy, for all policies, and per IP address. You can apply it also per application or application category, all in the same proxy policy.

The differences between backup and restore and the configuration file allow us to perform a migration from one box to another in a single click.

The security that is used for defending from the attacks is very good. As an example, for the HTTP packet, you will find botnet protection, Reputation Enabled Defense "RED" and DNSWatch "the DNS security", in addition to the AV gateway. They are all working together to protect internet access.

I would like to see the number of management consoles reduced. As it is now, Firebox can be configured using the web UI, WatchGuard System Manager, Dimension server, and from the cloud. This should be done without affecting the way we deal with the configuration file, as it's one of the strongest points in making its implementation smooth and easy.

I would like to see the devices made more flexible by adding modules to increase the ports that we can use. As it's started from T80, the last edition of tabletop appliances, it should also be applied to all M series appliances.

As I work as a services provider, I have used many different solutions. I find WatchGuard Firebox provides very good value. as you find in the following points "Not everything":-

1. Configuration migration between boxes.

2. More flexible while applying traffic management.

3. Best performance.

4. Security layers and its dependencies.

5. Protocol oriented.

6. Rapid deploy feature that it let you make a total configuration remotely for a box on its default factory mode.

7. total protection for inbound and outbound traffic by applying the policies with a deep understanding of the traffic. 

8. The DNS security and how it stops the malicious DNS requests on the scale of network security and its endpoint for mobile users to apply the same while they are outside the environment.

9. SD-WAN feature and how it deals with lines quality by its Jitter, loss, and latency.

10. The exception for sites, ports, and IPs, it has a huge variety and you can do it at many levels. Before the policies starting already in the default threat protection, Or in the global settings but after the policies starting to scan then you can avoid all of that per policy per protection type which is meaning that you can expect something from geolocation or WebBlocker or APT Blocker, etc...

11. there are some other features in the box Access Portal, Application Control, APT Blocker, Botnet Detection, Data Loss Prevention (DLP), Gateway AntiVirus, DNSWatch, Geolocation, IntelligentAV, Intrusion Prevention Service (IPS), Reputation Enabled Defense (RED), spamBlocker, Threat Detection and Response, and WebBlocker.

We are using WatchGuard Firebox for defense of our internal infrastructure.

I wouldn't say that Firebox has improved the way our organization functions, but rather that it protects our organization.

The solution identifies attacks on our services and, as a result, directs our attention precisely to the cause of the problem. As we are not actively watching the traffic ourselves and we completely rely on Firebox to alert us instead, the solution saves us about 30 hours per week.

The most valuable features are WatchGuard’s antivirus, traffic protection, and ease of configuration. I also appreciate their traffic analytics. 

After conducting several tests I found the antivirus is working very well. Additionally, they have a very interesting feature, DNS WatchGuard, which is checking DNS requests for phishing, among other things, and it has caught a lot of unwanted attempts and attacks.

Regarding the management features, the interface is user-friendly, and the instructions are well documented. There is a fast learning curve and everything is intuitive and understandable.

It also provides us with layered security. Firebox protects our traffic, as we have numerous Web Services that are external and which are a priority for us to defend. We don't use the rest as much.

I haven’t dug deeply into the reporting features yet or if they are working well. However, I have generated several reports and there was too much unnecessary information, in comparison with the reporting features in the Sophos firewall. Sophos' reporting is more readable and easier to configure. Having said that, reporting features were not very important for us when selecting a solution. What was important were other types of functionality that WatchGuard Firebox was able to meet.

In addition to the reporting features, I would suggest they work on an SSL VPN gateway.

We have been working with WatchGuard Firebox for about one year. Initially we got an M200 model and then switched to an M470 in a cluster.

In terms of the stability, everything is perfect. We haven’t experienced any issues.

The solution scales intuitively and quickly with any internet, meaning the solution’s protocols support any internet configuration. The connectivity scales in any location.

We could scale it to several companies with up to 100 employees and up to 1 Gb of traffic.

I would rate WatchGuard's tech support at the highest mark of five out of five. I was very pleased with them. We were working with them on the software licensing and opened some tickets related to technical issues. In both cases, they resolved the issues promptly and without unnecessary back-and-forth, unlike when working with the support teams of other vendors.

Before Firebox we used a Sophos firewall. We switched because the WatchGuard firewall offers a broad set of features and parameters that were lacking in the Sophos firewall. Additionally, the WatchGuard solution was cheaper.

WatchGuard has a comprehensive antivirus system included in the firewall and that was important for us. Sophos’ antivirus features were weak, in comparison.

The initial setup was medium in terms of the difficulty of some aspects, such as initially understanding the logic of their security policies. It took several hours to acquaint myself and to fully understand things. The whole deployment took about three days.

We initially had an implementation strategy, but it was adapted according to the recommendations and specifications of WatchGuard.

In terms of the technical aspects, I am the only who works with this solution in our organization.

Initially, we purchased the Firebox just for us but, as of today, we have deployed it to two or three other companies. The client sent us project specs with necessary internet configurations for each device, as well as the physical locations. We replicated their infrastructure in our test environment, configured each device according to their specs, and shipped the device to them. The client then connected the device with a cable to the ports outlined in our instructions and everything worked the first time.

During the deployment we worked closely with WatchGuard’s tech support team and they were very speedy in their responses to us.

The price of the solution corresponds to the quality and the feature set offered. There are no additional costs to the standard licensing fees.

Before selecting WatchGuard Firebox, we evaluated the Cisco FirePOWER firewall and, in comparison, Firebox is much easier to use.

Also, WatchGuard’s solution, in terms of the cost-per-value ratio, is very balanced.

My advice would be to try this product.

As for the throughput, at this point it is hard for us to evaluate it because we don’t have heavy traffic, or at least we do not experience the traffic throughput specified for this model. Our inbound and outbound traffic is 1 Gb and the M470 handles it very well, not even stressing its components.

When it comes to the solution’s Cloud Visibility feature, they need to improve on the reporting. But in terms of the logs, it gives us very good visibility.

Overall, I would rate the solution a strong eight out of 10.

We use it to protect our web stations and service. 

We established a branch office VPN to our branch office. Since last month, we have added Mobile VPN tunnels to our headquarter.

We have the ability to use it for connecting to our terminal services, then to the Fireboxes, so we can create user-based policies, which are very important at this time. We can control who has access to management servers and machines that are not for general use by users.

We use a normal packet server. We are also using a proxy service and IPS, so all features are possible with these devices. We have seen many attacks from specific IP addresses that were all blocked. Most times, these were IPS traffic port scans. All this traffic is normally blocked from our side.

The solution simplifies my business. Normally, for administration, we are using Watchguard System Manager on Windows since it's easy to create new policies. In a short amount of time, you can create new policies based on new requirements. For example, in the last few months, many requirements changed due to the coronavirus, adding the use of new services, like Office 365, and eLearning tools, like Zoom.

With Firebox, the monitoring is good. On the Dimension servers, I can see where the IP addresses send and receive a lot of the traffic so I can analyze it. I am also able to see where attacks are coming from. It's good to see visually what policies are most in use and which traffic was blocked. Its easy to visualize policies. The dimension server shows which policy is used and the data flow through the firebox.

For our requirements, WatchGuard has very good features available in its software.

It is good for administrating devices. It is reliable and easy to use. Most of the time, the results are what I expected.

The performance of the device is good. The time to load web pages has not been slowed down too much. With additional security features, like APT and IPS, WatchGuard Fireboxes need a moment to check the traffic.

For reporting, we use the Dimension server from WatchGuard where we have many options to analyze traffic. It has a good look and feel on all websites that WatchGuard creates. All pages have the same system, so it's easy to use because the interface is uniform throughout the entire solution.

We are using some of the cloud visibility features. What we use on that cloud is DNSWatch, which checks the DNS records for that site. It is a good feature that stops attacks before they come into the network. For most of our clients, we also run DNSWatchGO, which is for external users, and does a good job with threat detection and response. It is a tool that works with a special client on our workstations. 

Sometimes I would like to copy a rule set from one box to another box in a direct way. This is a feature that is not present at the moment in WatchGuard.

I'm missing a tool by default, where you can find unused policies. This is possible when a) you adminstrate the firebox with dimension, or b) you connect it to Watchguard's cloud.

We have been using this solution for a long time (for more than a decade).

The stability is very good. I normally only do a reboot of a Firebox when I upgrade the boxes with new software, so they run sometimes two or three months without a reboot.

It is scalable to many environments. With all our locations, we found this solution works.

For the moment, we have around 80 users total at all our locations. The traffic at our headquarters per day is 300 gigabytes.

Our number of Fireboxes has been constant over the last few years, as we don't have new locations. We are a sports organization, so we are not expanding.

WatchGuard's support is very good. Over the years, there have been only one or two tickets that were not solved.

When you start as a new customer, you should start with a bit of support from your dealer so you have some training on the boxes and how to manage them.

Before using WatchGuard, we had a Linux server with iptables. We switched to Firebox because it is much easier to administrate. It has real boxes with a graphical interface, instead of command line administration.

It is relatively easy to set up a new box. In my experience, you have a basic rule set. When you start with a new box, you can quickly make it work, but you always need to specify the services that you need on the boxes. You need some time to create the right policies and services on the box. This is the process for all Fireboxes that you buy.

When you have a small branch office with a small number of policies, you can make them active in production in one or two hours. With complex requirements at your headquarters where you have several networks with servers, web servers, and mail servers which can be accessed from the outside, the configuration will need more time because the number of policies is much higher.

The implenetation was done by the vendor. For us the solution was ok. At this point my knowledge about firewall was not on the level I have today.

It saves me three or four a month worth of time because it stops malware. I don't need spend time removing malware from the client.

I think the larger firewall packages are much better because a normal firewall is not enough for these times. You need IPS, APT, and all the security features of a firewall that you can buy.

We evaluated some other solutions.

Administration of Fireboxes is only a small part of my job. I have been the network administrator since 1997. While the solution does make less work, I still need a little time to monitor all solutions. 

I would rate this solution as a nine (out of 10).