We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Sophos UTM based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."This solution has helped our organization by having strong functions and a reliable firewall."
"Initial setup is easy to configure."
"The most valuable feature is the policy routing and application control."
"It is a safe product."
"Fortinet FortiGate is stable. It's used across all the countries, this is the way most multinationals run their system."
"The most valuable feature is the bundled subscription, which is IPS, TV and web filtering."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is load balancing. It can provide central management and VPNA. Additionally, it has enhanced our security environment."
"The Fortinet FortiGate local partners were good. I did not have direct contact with Fortinet support."
"We use the solution for deep packet inspection, Internet Edge functionality, IDS, and IDP."
"The most valuable feature would be ASDM. The ability to go in, visualize and see the world base in a clear and consistent manner is very powerful."
"I think Cisco ASA Firewall is the most stable firewall solution."
"I like the user interface because the navigation is very easy, straightforward on your left side pane you have all the sites that you need to browse. Unlike any other firewalls, it's pretty straightforward."
"The most important feature is the VPN connection."
"I found that setting up rules for HTTPS and SSH access to the management interface are straightforward, including setting the cypher type."
"So far, it has been very stable."
"The Adversity Malware Protection (AMP) feature is the most valuable. It is also very easy to use. Every technical user can operate this solution without any difficulty. The dashboard of Cisco Firepower has every tool that a security operator needs. You can find every resource that you need to operate through this dashboard."
"Brings greater visibility into the network traffic coming inside and passing away from the company."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos UTM is the efficiency and mail filtering module."
"The initial setup is pretty easy."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos UTM is the simple-to-use interface."
"We find all of the features valuable because together they fit the needs of our customers."
"This is a very stable product."
"Sophos UTM's best feature is synchronized security."
"What I like about the solution is the ease of use."
"The ease of use could be improved."
"The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall."
"One area for improvement is the performance on the bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering."
"With FortiGate, the main complaint that I have heard is about the technical support."
"Fortinet currently has many products bundled with FortiGate including the basic firewall and load balancer, and I think that that they need to have separate product portfolios for each of these specialized services."
"The pricing could be a bit better, especially when you consider how they have the most basic offering priced."
"We have an issue with hotel guest vouchers."
"There can be more security in hybrid implementations. When a customer has a hybrid environment where some parts are in the cloud, we need a consistent security solution for such scenarios."
"I have used Fortinet, Palo Alto, and Check Point previously and I prefer the process of everything working together."
"Cisco should redo their website so it's actually usable in a faster way."
"The inclusion of an autofill feature would improve the ease of commands."
"I would like to see them update the GUI so that it doesn't look like it was made in 1995."
"When you make any changes, irrespective of whether they are big or small, Firepower takes too much time. It is very time-consuming. Even for small changes, you have to wait for 60 seconds or maybe more, which is not good. Similarly, when you have many IPS rules and policies, it slows down, and there is an impact on its performance."
"If Cisco could stop rebranding, combine all the CLIs/GUIs, and give a consistent experience, this would be great."
"This is an older product and has reached end-of-life."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say the UTM part should be more integrated for one price, because if you buy ASA from Cisco, you need to buy another contract service from Cisco as a filter for the dictionary of attacks. In Fortinet, you buy a firewall and you have it all."
"An area for improvement in Sophos UTM is load balancing because my company cannot use it currently. If Sophos could release a new configuration for the load balancing feature to work for my company, that would be great."
"Updates come out agonizingly slowly, a trickle."
"We would like to have unique viewable IDs for rules and in the packet filter logfile, for easier debugging of old log files."
"The classification segregation of applications lacks sufficient definition."
"Anti-phishing functionality should be improved."
"The reporting system needs to allow for customizations because many reports do not include details that we expect."
"It does have built-in policies, which enable you to disable USB devices, etc. It would be nice if they had more policies because there are not that many of them."
"The solution needs to do better at covering mobile devices, although they may have an integrated solution for that purpose."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Sophos UTM is ranked 1st in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 110 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Sophos UTM is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos UTM writes "It's a highly stable platform with very few hardware issues". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and SonicWall NSa, whereas Sophos UTM is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Untangle NG Firewall. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Sophos UTM report.
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