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Field Effect MDR vs Sophos MDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.1
Field Effect MDR enhanced financial returns, facilitated contract renewals, and increased new business by 35% with appreciated pricing flexibility.
Sentiment score
6.4
Sophos MDR offers cost-efficient security management, reducing staffing needs and protecting against real-time threats, enhancing ROI for businesses.
It allows them to have access to a SOC-like service without the associated costs.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.4
Field Effect MDR's customer service is praised for responsiveness, expertise, and availability, earning commendations despite calls for extended hours.
Sentiment score
6.9
Sophos MDR support is broadly positive with excellent assistance, though some users experience slow response times and communication issues.
Field Effect MDR provides real human support, which offers precise instruction and guidance.
Sophos offers different support levels depending on the severity of the issues, which ensures timely assistance.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
Field Effect MDR offers seamless scalability, efficiently accommodating growth and diverse environments with minimal maintenance and effortless upgrades.
Sentiment score
7.9
Sophos MDR is scalable and easily integrates across industries, though it may have limitations compared to competitors like Cisco.
Sophos MDR seems to have no limitations on scalability.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
Field Effect MDR offers stable, reliable performance without crashes, integrating smoothly across environments for diverse organizations.
Sentiment score
7.9
Sophos MDR is rated highly for stability, with most users satisfied despite occasional update issues and room for improvement.
I would rate the stability as very reliable.
 

Room For Improvement

Enhancements needed include third-party integration, threat response, user interface, cloud support, communication, SIEM, DNS filtering, and compliance reporting.
Sophos MDR needs improvement in performance, integration, pricing, automation, language communication, and customer service for better user experience.
Pricing needed improvement, which was addressed by reducing the buying cost recently.
 

Setup Cost

Field Effect MDR is cost-effective with tiered pricing, offering value and efficiency, though budgeting can be challenging.
Sophos MDR provides competitive pricing, often cheaper than major competitors, with negotiable terms tailored for specific industries' needs.
Pricing was initially a concern, but the recent updates have resolved that by offering a more accessible buying cost.
The solution is cost-efficient, especially for small customers who cannot justify the expense of setting up an internal SOC.
 

Valuable Features

Field Effect MDR offers comprehensive security with advanced detection, automated responses, and proactive alerts, enhancing threat visibility and protection.
Sophos MDR offers real-time threat hunting, centralized management, automated detection, and third-party integration for comprehensive cybersecurity solutions.
Field Effect MDR provides workstation coverage, user account protection with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, and on-premise device management for network security.
The most valuable feature of Sophos MDR is that it offers a monitoring service directly from the OEM, which is beneficial for SMB customers who cannot afford a SOC.
 

Categories and Ranking

Field Effect MDR
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
3rd
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Sophos MDR
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of Field Effect MDR is 3.1%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sophos MDR is 6.0%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
 

Featured Reviews

Rob Schenk - PeerSpot reviewer
The most valuable aspect of the solution is the comprehensive visibility it offers
The most valuable aspect of Field MDR is the comprehensive visibility the solution offers. Most solutions cover the traditional threat landscape for endpoints, including computers, endpoints, servers, etc. However, there are also risk within the network environment, such as WiFi, mobile, the Internet of Things, smart TVs, video surveillance systems, etc., that have associated vulnerabilities. These devices may not be actively managed or protected in most environments. Field Effect MDR gives you visibility across the entire ecosystem. With this broad visibility, you can significantly lower your operational risk. Field Effect has a team of high-quality security analysts reviewing the initial triage to determine whether an alert is actionable. They clear out the false positives and feed our security operation center actionable alerts. It lets us save time because we're only dealing with real issues instead of weeding out the false positives and wasting time. Managing Field Effect is straightforward. We have a good internal process to manage this. It's mainly about having some automation in place to streamline things and having some processes for keeping my software and third-party patching up to date. A lot of security alerts fall in those areas. It helps us identify issues quickly and lower the overall risk for our client rate. It groups alerts by risk levels. The nomenclature is straightforward and easy to understand. Our engineers and technicians are well-versed in the topic.
Shaun Gordon - PeerSpot reviewer
Extensive data lake, ease of use is great and you can really get started very quickly
Sophos MDR is a service. MDR is managed detection and response. It's a managed security service. So instead of having an anti-malware, which in Sophos' case would be Intercept X, with MDR, they add human-led threat hunting. It's a managed service. So it's not a product that you sell the client per se. You're selling them a service, which is almost like an SLA, and that includes Cloud MDR. MDR is not a product. It's a service. The reality is that when it comes to the likes of SentinelOne, McAfee, CrowdStrike, ESET, and all the other players out there, they're single-product security companies. CrowdStrike is an anti-malware. That's one thing. ESET, same thing. But if you look at the other vendors, within the appliances, you're looking at Fortinet, Palo Alto, and Checkpoint. They only sell firewalls. That's all they do. When you deal with Sophos, they are the entire product suite. They sell firewalls. They sell Intercept X, which is their anti-malware, Intercept X for Server with anti-malware, email protection with ties into Office 365, and Sophos Plus encryption. All of these security products pull telemetry. So every time somebody hits a firewall, it's called, for argument's sake, that goes into their central data lake. All the firewalls around the world add that information to a data lake. Now, when you're dealing with Sophos, because of their exposure, because they've got so many different products, their data lake is a lot more extensive than competing vendors because they're not relying on one threat factor. They're not relying on one area of expertise. They're a global company. So, I can't compare their telemetry, for instance, to the likes of CrowdStrike. If CrowdStrike has probably started doing appliances, then the users will get that benefit as well. Sophos is the only vendor that does do that. It's like hiring a security team. Sophos do things differently in that they've got more telemetry and more insight into a network because they offer a variety of products. The other part about it is Sophos MDR; the service, unlike other vendors like CrowdStrike, is not limited to their products. If you are running CrowdStrike in your company, for instance, you can get their integration packs, in which case Sophos will manage your CrowdStrike system for you. Whereas with CrowdStrike, it's only CrowdStrike. You are locked into that vendor. So Sophos offers that flexibility. It's a multi-vendor service as opposed to SentinelOne or CrowdStrike, which is a single-vendor service. For instance, if I'm running Sophos, I would like to go with CrowdStrike MDR. I would have to remove my entire security investment, in this case, Sophos, and reinstall CrowdStrike in order to use their service. Sophos doesn't have that problem. If you've got CrowdStrike and you've already invested in CrowdStrike, cool. You stay on CrowdStrike. They will still manage it for you.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
52%
Retailer
4%
Government
4%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
6%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Field Effect Covalence?
It is very user-friendly. We have regular reports to see what is going on.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Field Effect Covalence?
Pricing was initially a concern, but the recent updates have resolved that by offering a more accessible buying cost.
What needs improvement with Field Effect Covalence?
Some resources lack experience, but issues can be escalated to more knowledgeable contacts. Pricing needed improvement, which was addressed by reducing the buying cost recently. Like any product, s...
What do you like most about Sophos MDR?
The user doesn't need a technician; it offers 24/7 support to identify and manage your infrastructure and take complete care of any technological incidents.
What needs improvement with Sophos MDR?
I don't have many suggestions for improvement in Sophos MDR as it performs quite well. It would be beneficial to have the ability to pull a report of all incident responses within a tenant, with ca...
What advice do you have for others considering Sophos MDR?
I believe Sophos MDR pricing is reasonable for my customers. I would recommend those planning to use Sophos MDR to consider what financial impact a compromise could have on their organization and c...
 

Also Known As

Field Effect Covalence
Sophos Managed Threat Response
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Field Effect MDR vs. Sophos MDR and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
864,155 professionals have used our research since 2012.