We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Sophos XGS 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."It's very good and very stable for businesses. It works very well."
"It enables our organization to become more productive. Also, it protects our NEtWare from viruses and malware."
"The features that I have found most valuable are that it is good to use, and most importantly, the pricing. The customer especially likes the discount when they trade up or something like that."
"The tool is a nice product and easy to handle. The software's user interface is also good. You can easily implement remote access in the solution."
"The flexibility and ease of configuration are the most valuable features."
"We can use our devices to check all of the perimeters. It secures email websites."
"I like Fortinet's cloud management. It allows me to manage all my devices in different branches for three cloud accounts. Even though I use on-prem devices, I can manage everything on the cloud."
"The technical support in our region is excellent."
"I have experience with URL filtering, and it is very good for URL filtering. You can filter URLs based on the categories, and it does a good job. It can also do deep packet inspection."
"The user interface is easy to navigate."
"For companies prioritizing security, the optimal choice is one that offers a range of feeds to cater to diverse needs. This is particularly crucial for organizations implementing DDoS mitigation. The preferred solutions typically align with the top server vendors, with Cisco, Forti, and Barracuda consistently ranking among the top three vendors we collaborate with."
"The most valuable features of Cisco firewalls are the IPS and IDS items. We find them very helpful. Those are the biggest things because we have some odd, custom-made products in our environment. What we've found through their IPS and IDS is that their vulnerability engines have caught things that are near-Zero-day items, inside of our network."
"Easy to deploy in a working environment between servers and users."
"You can also put everything into a nice, neat, little package, as far as configuration goes. I was formerly a command-line guy with the ASA, and I was a little nervous about dealing with a GUI interface versus a command line, but after I did my first deployment, I got a lot more comfortable with doing it GUI based."
"We definitely feel more secure. We have more control over things going in and out of our network."
"Cisco's engineer helped us with a lot of scripting to see what existed. Previously, we didn't have a proper policy. In fact, we didn't have any policy because we didn't have any firewall for the data center, so generating a policy was a big challenge. Cisco's engineer helped us to do some scripting and find out what kind of policy we can have and organize those policies. That was nice."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos XGS is the application control."
"Sophos XGS' best features are simplicity and its built-in reporting tool."
"Sophos XGS's most valuable feature is content filtering."
"Easy to set up firewall product, that's also easy to manage and scale."
"The solution is stable."
"The initial setup is very simple."
"The most valuable features in Sophos XGS are identity and VPN. It is a very good solution that is able to detect and prevent a lot of malicious activity."
"A couple of things I've seen that need improvement, especially in terms of a hard coding. The driver-level active moment really is out-of-the-box and we have to have contact the customer support and sometimes it is difficult to resolve."
"The central management for the FortiGate Fortinet Firewall needs improvement. They have the manager to do the essential management for both SD-WAN and for the security policy. They should also improve the SD-WAN function."
"The main aspect of FortiGate that could be improved is load balancing. Our management team does not want to buy another appliance for only load balancing."
"There could be more integration between the logging and analytical platforms to make it more seamless and integrated."
"The price of FortiGate should be reduced because there are some other leading products that are cheaper."
"The stability of Fortinet FortiGate could improve."
"The support is the main thing that needs to be improved."
"It needs to improve its ISP load balancing."
"Bandwidth allocation needs improvement."
"We see a lot of vendors in the market with a lot of niche products. I understand that it's difficult to cover everything, but making it more open for integration with other vendors would be a value add for Cisco."
"Integration aspects and traffic shaping need improvement."
"One feature lacking is superior anti-virus protection, which must be added."
"Antivirus features must be integrated for end user security."
"I would like for the user interface to be easier for the admin and network admin. I would also like to be able to access everything from the GUI interface. The way it is now, it needs somebody experience in iOS to be able to operate it. I would like to have a GUI interface."
"It can probably provide a holistic view of different appliances because many customers do not have only one brand, besides the traditional SNMP protocols, to cover all their devices. There are some specific requirements in terms of configurations or actions that sometimes have to be done in a very manual way because of the different versions or brands in a customer's infrastructure. It could also have some additional analytics capabilities. It has some very interesting ways to monitor the traffic and identify false positives from the architecture and the environment. It would be good if there is a way to patch with some other industry-specific solutions and synchronize some of the information, such as what other customers experience in their operations and probably share some additional information that could be leveraged or shared among the industry. Such information would be something interesting to see. It could have AI capabilities related to how the appliances could benefit from learning the current environment and different exposures."
"There's a little bit of a disconnect between Firepower’s management and the rest of the products, like DNA and Prime. The solution should have fewer admin portals for network, security, and firewalls."
"The solution could improve inspection processes and troubleshooting for VPNs because this area is very weak."
"In version 18 of Sophos XGS, the log details are not very good. However, in version 19 they are more detailed. The Fortinet FortiGate has better detail overall compared to Sophos XGS. They provide updates to the solution frequently, but they do not fix the problems that exist."
"Sophos configurations are a bit complex."
"I recommend Sophos increase the user capacity of the firewall by 1.5 times. For example, say the firewall can accommodate 1,000 users now, then it should handle a load of 1,500 users."
"There are some issues with conversion and user roles when upgrading to Cyberoam."
"They need intelligent reporting, not just your simple, standard reports."
"Sophos XGS's response to zero-day attacks could be improved."
"In future releases, this solution could have more graphical elements on the dashboard to make it easier to understand."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Sophos XGS is ranked 18th in Firewalls with 58 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Sophos XGS is rated 8.0. 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 XGS writes "Highly stable, scalable, and priced well". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas Sophos XGS is most compared with Sophos XG, OPNsense, Netgate pfSense, WatchGuard Firebox and SonicWall NSa. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Sophos XGS report.
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