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."Their proxy-based inspection is responsive and secure."
"We use the filtering feature the most. It has filtering and inbuilt securities. We can create customized rules to define which users can access a particular type of site. We can create policies inside the firewall."
"The main reason why I purchased the particular unit was that it had good reviews and what other people were saying as far as its completeness and its leading capabilities in terms of endpoint security was very good."
"This solution has solid UTM features combined with a nice GUI."
"The stability and scalability of this solution are satisfactory. Its SD-WAN, VPN, and URL filtering features are very useful."
"What I like the most is the configuration and that it's simple, and straightforward to maintain."
"The integration with Active Directory is one of the good features. Most of the customers are now looking for the Single Sign-on feature. So, being able to integrate Active Directory with the firewall is useful. It is also easy."
"FortiGate is very simple to manage and easy to use."
"I would say the Firepower module is most valuable. I'm trying more to transition to this kind firewall. I had to study a little on Palo Alto Networks equipment. There is a lot I have to learn about the difference."
"The high-availability and remote VPN features are most valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the access control list (ACL)."
"It integrates with various Cisco security portfolios and products, and there is an easy and seamless integration for building a complete security framework for our customers."
"Protecting our landscape in general and being able to see logging when things aren't going as set out in policies are valuable features. Our security department is keen on seeing the logging."
"I have not contacted technical support. There is a lot of information on the internet for troubleshooting. All you need to do is use a search engine and you will find the information you are looking for easily."
"Strong in NAT and access-lists."
"The ASA has seen significant improvement due to the IPS."
"I would recommend UTM over XG because it's easier to manage."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos UTM is reporting, it is flexible. I can monitor the end user's devices, even when they are not on my network. It has good drill-down capabilities."
"The packet filtering's great. You get out what you put into it. It works great as long as you know your security and configure everything adequately. If you just pop one in and it's not configured, then it's basically wide open. It kind of depends on the admin skill, but it's an excellent product."
"The most valuable feature is the price. I've been requesting prices all over these years between different solutions like Fortinet, Palo Alto, and Check Point and Sophos has been the cheapest and the best of all of them that I have tried. I have been working with Fortinet, it's a fact that the price is surprisingly better."
"It has allowed us to design a bespoke cloud space for our clients, while still having an excellent level of protection."
"Sophos UTM provides security for our network here and access through a VPN connection for our remote users. It also offers the flexibility to create different tools for accessibility."
"Scaling out cannot be easier, as there are many migration paths."
"The most valuable feature is the IPS. It also protects us from malware."
"It's my understanding that more of the current generation features could be brought in. There could be more integration with EDRs, for example."
"FortiOS is not simple."
"The setup is pretty complex and not easy to implement."
"I could not configure sFlow from the FortiGate graphical user interface. I realized that the sFlow configuration is available only from the CLI, and discovered that sFlow is not supported on virtual interfaces, such as VDOM links, IPsec, or GRE."
"It is stable, but its stability can be improved."
"I use the FortiGate 60D model and realized the 300Mbps bandwidth limitation. Because it is a product that offers many services, I think it could have greater bandwidth capacity."
"Difficult to add or define, and not that easy to configure and manage."
"Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve the logging and reporting. Additionally, the next-generation application's policies should be improved. When they were released they had bugs."
"I wouldn't give them a ten. Nobody is perfect. I'll give them a nine because they help me with any issues I've had."
"The only con that I have really seen with it is the reporting structure. FirePOWER is good. It has been a great help because, before that, it was not good at all."
"I have a lot of difficulties with the solution's Firewall Management Center (FMC) and the GUI. Neither is responsive enough and should be improved."
"I have found that Cisco reporting capabilities are not as rich as other products, so the reporting could be improved."
"I would like to see improvement when you create policies on Snort 3 IPS on Cisco Firepower. On Snort 2, it was more like a UI page where you had some multiple choices where you could tweak your config. On Snort 3, the idea is more to build some rules on the text file or JSON file, then push it. So, I would like to see a lot of improvements here."
"The security features in the URL category need more improvement."
"They could improve by having more skilled, high-level engineers that are available around the clock. I know that's an easy thing to say and a hard thing to do."
"One of my main concerns, an area that could use improvement is in adjusting the need to buy a license to enable features."
"The logs are not clear, which means that you need an additional piece of software in order to read them clearly."
"Sophos UTM could improve if there was no limitation on users."
"The support could be better."
"There is still room for improvement in wireless protection. I don't mean their WiFi device is bad, but there are still things to improve on, such as WiFi roaming."
"There were a lot of features and functionality in Sophos SG UTM but nothing was state of the art in terms of technology. You did not get the latest functions. It was very monolithic as it was based on an old Linux PuTTY system."
"We had some problems with the configuration. They had provided a CloudFormation template, and we had to go several rounds to make it work."
"As it stands right now, when we have an internet failure on WAN1, it takes several minutes before our WAN2 connection picks up the traffic"
"Sophos UTM could improve the way the configuration has to be done. I have to do the configuration through the command line interface but if it could be done through the graphical user interface it would be much better."
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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