We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate-VM 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."The virtual firewall feature is the most valuable. We have around 1,500 firewalls. We did not buy individual hardware, and the virtual firewalls made sense because we don't have to keep on buying the hardware. FortiGate is easier to use as compared to Checkpoint devices. It is user friendly and has a good UI. You don't need much expertise to work on this firewall. You don't need to worry much about DCLA, commands, and things like that."
"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."
"We use a southern institution that's audited for IT security and the reporting that automatically comes off the unit makes it much easier to meet compliance standards and makes it easier as far as the amount of time that has to be spent to compile that information. If you get your reporting set up correctly when you initially set it up, you just select the one you want and hit print. The auditing trail on it is the best feature."
"The performance is good."
"Fortigate is very scalable to serve our customers' needs. We have scaled already from fifty to more than a hundred instances of Fortinet FortiGate. Around 20 staff are required for deployment and maintenance, mostly engineers."
"The security fabric is excellent."
"The solution is highly scalable because they have devices that can handle a large amount of traffic."
"This is an easy solution to deploy."
"I really like that it's internationally deployable."
"GitDM, like FortiGate VM, provides similar features to FortiGate appliances or cloud solutions. However, FortiGate VM is more suitable for heavy traffic and inspection compared to GitDM. Unfortunately, FortiGate VM lacks a dedicated SPU for inspection, and all features rely on CPU and RAM."
"I rate the tool's stability a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is easy to operate."
"The most valuables features are the ease of use and deployment."
"The technical support is very good."
"The policies are very valuable. They allow me to secure and manage future traffic effectively."
"Use of this product does not require daily interactions."
"It allows me to easily connect with more than forty-five remote sites and more than fifty remote users between IPsec and SSL VPN, applying the web filter and application filter to ensure a secure connection."
"The product is extremely intuitive."
"Configuration could not be made any easier."
"The features that I've known to be most valuable are both the web security features as well as the web firewall capabilities. As a partner of Sophos firewall, we have some clients and they are using Sophos firewall UTM and we are using it as well."
"Monitoring and reporting are areas that need improvement."
"It has helped by identifying threats within the company. If there are computers or servers that are compromised, then we are able to identify them right away in the system."
"The intrusion prevention is great, and I like dual virus scanning on the network layer because we scan it through Avira and Sophos. Web filtering is also a fantastic option for clients who want to really lock down internet access."
"The solution's sandboxing, application center, and database engine are good."
"Some configuration elements cannot be easily altered once created."
"Fortigate's hardware capacities could be improved."
"The non-error conserve mode has room for improvement."
"There could be more integration between the logging and analytical platforms to make it more seamless and integrated."
"The solution could be more evenly structured."
"It's my understanding that more of the current generation features could be brought in. There could be more integration with EDRs, for example."
"Fortinet needs to overhaul its documentation."
"The UI could be improved."
"The reporting is not as good as it is with other firewalls and it should be improved."
"The users must buy FortiSIEM to get advanced analytics."
"Deployment can be difficult and they could dispense with reliance on FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer."
"It is a very good product, and it is good at standing by itself. It can maybe have a little bit of integration with other products, but it is not that important for most use cases."
"FortiGate-VM could be improved by making it cloud-based. I'd like it to be a cloud-based management solution instead of just a dedicated management orchestration tool."
"We have lost some information and we do not know how that happened through the solution. So that needs improvement."
"The block, the clarity, the quarantine command, is not very user-friendly. You would have to do everything through the command line and I would have preferred if it wasn't a CLI."
"Right now, we have two data centers that are a thousand kilometers apart. It would be nice to be able to string them together."
"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."
"There needs to be some improvement in the IPsec VPN. There is implementation only support. I have version one. I'd be most interested in having IP version two from the protocol."
"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."
"In short, the UI and UX are the areas of improvement in Sophos UTM and similar solutions compared to Palo Alto."
"We didn’t find any issues but I know there have been some in the last few years."
"The virus updates will always depend on new viruses that are discovered. Maybe they can send a notification or a reminder for update time."
"This product could use some improvement with web filtering. It takes a lot of time and effort to set up and maintain."
"The reporting could improve by providing information on where, or from which device attacks are coming from. We are already given the country where the attack is coming from but more information would be beneficial."
Fortinet FortiGate-VM is ranked 8th in Firewalls with 113 reviews while Sophos UTM is ranked 1st in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 110 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate-VM is rated 8.4, while Sophos UTM is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate-VM writes "It's a solidly stable device with minimal downtime". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos UTM writes "It's a highly stable platform with very few hardware issues". Fortinet FortiGate-VM is most compared with Azure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Fortinet FortiOS, OPNsense and H3C SecPath Firewalls, whereas Sophos UTM is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. Sophos UTM report.
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