"The most valuable features of this solution are the integrations and IPS throughput."
"The customer service/technical support is very good with this solution."
"One of the most valuable features is the AMP. It's very good and very reliable when it comes to malicious activities, websites, and viruses."
"It is one of the fastest solutions, if not the fastest, in the security technology space. This gives us peace of mind knowing that as soon as a new attack comes online that we will be protected in short order. From that perspective, no one really comes close now to Firepower, which is hugely valuable to us from an upcoming new attack prevention perspective."
"One of the most valuable features of Firepower 7.0 is the "live log" type feature called Unified Event Viewer. That view has been really good in helping me get to data faster, decreasing the amount of time it takes to find information, and allowing me to fix problems faster. I've found that to be incredibly valuable because it's a lot easier to get to some points of data now."
"Firepower NGFW has improved my organization in several ways. Before, we were trying to stamp out security threats and issues, it was a one-off type of way to attack it. I spent a lot of manpower trying to track down the individual issues or flare-ups that we would see. With Cisco's Firepower Management, we're able to have that push up to basically one monitor and one UI and be able to track that and stop threats immediately. It also gives us a little more granularity on what those threats might be."
"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."
"Its Snort 3 IPS has better flexibility as far as being able to write rules. This gives me better granularity."
"It does exactly what it says on the tin. It is good for protecting the business from being compromised. Its port protection is very good."
"We like their interface very much. It's pretty easy to use."
"We are able to block whatever we want to block by using this product. It provides all required security features, such as content filtering, VPN, in one box. Before switching to SonicWall, we had specified all required features."
"The performance has been very good. Overall, the solution is quite stable."
"The feature with SonicWall that I have found most valuable is that all the models have the same interface. We don't need to learn different interfaces in the smaller or bigger models."
"The most valuable features are security and technical support."
"We are very much happy with the support."
"SonicWall TZ is a stable product."
"The policy monitoring and allowing different traffic flows are the most useful features for us; regulating which traffic comes in and out."
"The solution simplifies my business. Normally, for administration, we are using NetApp System Manager on Window since it's easy to create new policies. In a short amount of time, you can create new policies based on new requirements. For example, in the last few months, many requirements changed due to the coronavirus, adding the use of new services, like Office 365, and eLearning tools, like Zoom."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the FireWall features. The management side of WatchGuard is quite easy because it supports two ways to manage it - by the web and the other one they call WatchGuard systems manager. I used to be familiar with WSM only, but they improved their GUI in the web browser and now it is much easier to do it within the web browser."
"Two of the functionalities we use most are the traffic monitoring and the full panel dashboard. Those are two things that are very useful for us... In addition, it provides us with layered security. It allows us to determine what types of access, to which networks, we want to allow or deny."
"The ease of use is most valuable. You can quickly train someone who hasn't seen a firewall in life. You can get people up to speed, and in a few months, they are able to manage this product very easily. It is a very user-friendly, scalable, and stable product. Its price is also spot-on."
"Among the most valuable features is the ease of use — love the interface — of both the web interface and of the WatchGuard System Manager."
"The solution has increased productivity with our outside salespeople being able to connect into their computers and use those remotely."
"The main features of the solution are the control of the site-to-site network access and the overall features."
"On the VPN side, Firepower could be better. It needs more monitoring on VPNs. Right now, it's not that good. You can set up a VPN in Firepower, but you can't monitor it."
"Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall can be more secure."
"The price and SD-WAN capabilities are the areas that need improvement."
"It would be great if some of the load times were faster."
"The performance should be improved."
"I believe that the current feature set of the device is very good and the only thing that Cisco should work on is improving the user experience with the device."
"The configuration in Firepower Management Center is very slow. Deployment takes two to three minutes. You spend a lot of time on modifications. Whereas, in FortiGate, you press a button, and it takes one second."
"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."
"I would like the solution to build in more redundancy. I"
"Sometimes there is a glitch between the network connection. Last time, something happened on our IP phone, the SonicWall team did some updates to fix the issue. However, glitches happen very rarely. I did not experience any other types of problems."
"GUI interface could be improved."
"The VPN that is available in the new version is a bit bulky and slower in speed."
"Sonic Analyzer could be improved. It's difficult to manage and not very intuitive."
"There is a point I don't like about SonicWall in the past and now. Most of the destinations we look at when we're detecting some user using too much bandwidth or something like that, SonicWall just gave us destination IP address, instead of the full qualified domain name. I think that's the most important part that is still missing. I think that's the most important for us."
"We have experienced some issues with SonicWall TZ and they are lacking some advanced features other vendors have."
"In an upcoming release, SonicWall could improve by adding cloud management for all devices for free or at a nominal cost. Currently, they have a cloud management platform but is not free. We have the MySonicWall portal for purchasing from them for software updates and renewals."
"The only downside is that it is missing an API, that you can use to easily collect information from it."
"The usability could be better, but it is definitely manageable. If we have to go to a backup internet connection, that could be a little bit easier."
"I'm not really impressed with the reporting side of it. It may be something I just haven't figured out very well, but it's hard to filter down on reporting of the actual valuable information that you would want. There is a lot of information out there so you have to have some kind of tool capture it and then filter through. So far, I haven't found the reporting side of the WatchGuard to be that user-friendly."
"The solution is lacking a professional website, they should be updated more often."
"The UI is not as user-friendly as the model that I had used before, which was from Check Point. The design of the Firebox UI is restricted and needs an experienced network guy to understand the format and settings."
"There is room for improvement on the education side, regarding what does what, rather than just throwing it at a person and assuming they know everything about it. A lot of times, you have to call WatchGuard support to get the solution that will work, rather than their just having it published so that you can fix the problem on your own."
"There's always room for improvement, especially if the threats are getting more sophisticated and the IT department cannot sufficiently meet this kind of sophistication with their own knowledge and experience. Knowing that this solution can get up to the level of addressing a lot of these threats is something that everybody wishes for. If we look at the dark web and the lawful web, they are two opposites, and if these two good and bad collide in the world of the internet, you want the best possible product—especially if you cannot get to that point of knowledge. I am just an individual and end user, with limited knowledge of usage. That's why I say there's always room for improvement, from their side and also from mine, because by knowing exactly what they can achieve and the knowledge that they can get on an everyday basis, and the portion that is understandable to me, it's an improvement for them as well."
"The way Secure Sign-On authentication is happening needs to be improved. When the Secure Sign-On portal is turned on, anybody who comes into the campus, whether he or she is a staff member or a guest, has to go past the initial portal. One of the shortcomings is the username. It shouldn't allow permutations or combinations with upper or lower cases. For example, when there is a username abc, it shouldn't allow ABC or Abc. It should not allow the same username, but currently, two separate people can go in. Therefore, its authentication or validation should be improved, and the case sensitiveness should be picked up. If I have restricted someone to two devices, they shouldn't be able to use different combinations of the same username and get into the third or fourth device. It shouldn't allow different combinations of alphabets to be used to log in."
More Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall Pricing and Cost Advice →
SonicWall TZ is ranked 11th in Firewalls with 36 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 3rd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 27 reviews. SonicWall TZ is rated 8.4, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of SonicWall TZ writes "Easy to implement, fairly stable, and supports SSL-DPI". On the other hand, the top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Competent, basic front-end; the ports that I have assigned appear to be unattainable to outsiders". SonicWall TZ is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate, Cisco ASA Firewall, Sophos XG, Meraki MX and Untangle NG Firewall, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate, Sophos XG, pfSense, Cisco ASA Firewall and Azure Firewall. See our SonicWall TZ vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
