Sophos UTM vs Vectra AI comparison

Sophos UTM is a unified threat management platform designed to protect your businesses from known and emerging malware including viruses, rootkits and spyware. The solution provides a complete network security package with everything your organization needs in a single modular appliance.

Sophos UTM Features

Sophos UTM has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

• Web and Email Filtering
• General Management
• Network Protection
• Network Routing and Services
• Advanced Threat Protection
• Authentication
• Email Encryption and DLP
• Web Policy
• End-User Portal
• VPN IPsec Client, VPN SSL Client, and Clientless VPN
• Web Application Firewall Protection
• UTM Endpoint Protection and Management
• SEC Endpoint Integration
• Logging and Reporting

Sophos UTM Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Sophos UTM. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

• Simplifies your IT security without the complexity of multiple point solutions
• Intuitive interface to help you quickly create policies to control security risks
• Provides clear, detailed reports to give you the insight you need to improve your network performance and protection
• Complete control to block, allow, shape and prioritize applications
• Two-factor authentication with one-time password (OTP)
• Integrated wireless controller
• Allows you to connect remote offices with easy VPN and Wi-Fi

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the Sophos UTM solution.

PeerSpot user Dana B., Network Administrator at a manufacturing company, says “The web and email filtering are the two biggest and most valuable aspects of the solution for us. The solution overall has just been a good, cost-effective solution for us. The solution offers a lot of functionality. The solution scales well. We've found the technical support to be helpful. The stability and performance are quite good.”

A Technical Director at a security firm mentions, "Sophos SG UTM had all the basic functionality that you needed. It is user-friendly and easy to manage for any integrator."

Marek M., Senior Network Engineer at a computer software company, comments, “Sophos UTM is the simplest of these products to set up. If you follow the instructions using the wizard, which is just a few steps, then you will have a firewall to protect you and your customer.”

A Software Sales Manager at a tech services company explains, “The overall visibility of the console is what I find most valuable, plus it's very user-friendly. It can be integrated with other solutions such as SOAR, SIEM, etc., even when you have an existing firewall. I really like that the console can be integrated. You'll see everything on the same window, and the single window feature of the machine is so good. These are the features I really like.”

James D., IT Manager at Manual Workers Union, states, “The fact that it's on the cloud means we don't have to administer it on our network or deal with a physical machine, which saves us money. The solution has many great features. From the console, we can start different scannings on different machines. We enjoy the centralized reporting part of it. The initial setup is simple. We enjoy its general stability. The solution can scale. So far, the solution has been problem-free.”

Vectra threat detection and response is a complete cybersecurity platform that collects, detects, and prioritizes security alerts. The Cognito platform for Network Detection and Response (NDR) detects and responds to attacks inside cloud, data center, Internet of Things, and enterprise networks. The platform also provides automated response capabilities for low-level threats and escalates more severe anomalies to security personnel.

Cognito captures data for multiple relevant sources and enriches it with context and security insights. It starts by deploying sensors across different networks in datacenters, IoT, or enterprise networks. The algorithm extracts relevant metadata from network and cloud traffic. The information can also be non-security information that can help investigation. 

The data is enriched with security context to support critical use cases, such as threat detection, investigation, hunting and compliance. The platform is machine learning-based, which enables it to adapt to any new and current threat scenario. It detects, clusters, prioritizes, and anticipates attacks by using identity and host-level enforcement. 

With the Vectra platform, a person can investigate 50 threats in just two hours. By prioritizing alerts and leveraging threat intelligence, it provides faster results.Vectra solves today’s security challenges for network detection and response. 

One of Vectra’s best features is the emphasis they put in pairing research and data science for security insights. It offers behavior codification with unsupervised, supervised, and deep learning models. 

The pricing is according to a subscription model with a free trial available.Vectra is available for Office 365, Azure AD and AWS Brain.

Features of Vectra AI

• AI-based threat detection and response. 
• Detects attacks in real time with behavior-based threat detection. 
• Consolidates and correlates thousands of events, detecting threats. 
• Enriches threat investigation with a chain of evidence and data science security insights. 
• Machine learning techniques, including deep learning and neural networks. 
• Gives visibility into cyberattackers and analyzes all network traffic. 
• Continuous updates with new threat detection algorithms. 
• Provides encryption at rest and in transit. For the AWS version, it offers AES-256 encryption via AWS Key Management Service. 
• Guaranteed availability according to the SLA of the service selected. 
• Does not connect to public sector networks. 

Benefits of Vectra AI

• Behavioral models use AI to find unknown attackers. 
• Context increases the accuracy of threat hunting. 
• Allows for proactive action by prioritizing the most relevant information. 
• Provides a clear picture and extensive context for investigations. 
• Aids decision-making in the incident response process. 
• Helps working with large datasets by capturing metadata at scale. 
• Automates time-consuming analysis. 
• Reduces the security analysts’ workloads on threat investigations. 

Other advantages of Vectra services include that they can be deployed in the public, private, or hybrid cloud. Support is available via email or online ticketing with an average of 4 hours of response. Phone support is available 24/7. 

Vectra provides full on-site and online training and documentation. Regarding the user interface, it supports several types of web browsers, such as Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera. However, it is not available for mobile devices.

Reviews from Real Users

Here’s what PeerSpot users of Vectra AI have to say about it:

"One of the core features is that Vectra AI triages threats and correlates them with compromised host devices. From a visibility perspective, we can better track the threat across the network. Instead of us potentially finding one device that has been impacted without Vectra AI, it will give us the visibility of everywhere that threat went. Therefore, visibility has increased for us." - Dave W., Operations Manager at a healthcare company

"It does a reliable job of parsing out the logs of all the network traffic so that we can ingest them into our SIEM and utilize them for threat hunting and case investigations. It is pretty robust and reliable. The administration time that we spend maintaining it or troubleshooting it is very low.” - T.S., Senior Security Engineer at a manufacturing company