We performed a comparison between Sophos XG and WatchGuard Firebox based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: WatchGuard Firebox comes out on top in this comparison. It is easy to use, performs well, and has robust security protocols. In addition, its support is better than that of Sophos XG.
"I'm a big fan of SecureX, Cisco's platform for tying together all the different security tools. It has a lot of flexibility and even a lot of third-party or non-Cisco integration. I feel like that's a really valuable tool."
"The initial setup was not complex."
"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 content filtering is good."
"Application inspection, network segmentation, and encrypted traffic detection or encrypted traffic analysis (ETA) are valuable for our customers."
"All the features except IPS are valuable. IPS is not a part of my job."
"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."
"Cisco ASA works very nicely from an administration perspective. The management of the device is very nice. The ASDM (Adaptive Security Device Manager) is the software that we use and it is very easy to configure using the GUI."
"Sophos is easy to use."
"Great reporting feature and great customer support."
"We can configure rules with the user, traffic, etc., making it a very versatile solution for our network."
"The updates are helpful and add to the solution in a positive way."
"The performance of Sophos XG is generally good and it is stable."
"The most valuable features are the reporting, dashboards, and graphical user interface. It gives a good overall picture of what is happening over the network."
"Reporting is the most valuable feature."
"Sophos XG's price is right, and it's easy to manage. It's a good fit for our current needs at the moment."
"Management and visibility are the most valuable features."
"I like intrusion detection the most."
"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."
"The most valuables feature of WatchGuard Firebox are the VPNs, and web filtering where we can stop users from going to malicious sites."
"Firebox's best feature is the access portal."
"This product offers great protection using the default settings."
"What I found most valuable in WatchGuard Firebox is that it's a functional platform that works, and each of its features works well. The solution also has good reporting and dashboard capabilities. I also find the overall performance of WatchGuard Firebox great."
"The set up was quite straightforward and we handled it in-house. It took a few hours to deploy the product."
"The only drawback of the user interface is when it comes to policies. When you open it and click on the policies, you have to move manually left and right if you want to see the whole field within the cell. Checkpoint has a very detailed user interface."
"I would like it if there was a centralized way to manage policies, then sticking with the network functions on the actual devices. That is probably the thing that frustrates me the most. I want a way that you can manage multiple policies at several different locations, all at one site. You then don't have to worry about the connectivity piece, in case you are troubleshooting because connectivity is down."
"Cisco's inspection visibility could be better."
"Sometimes, it is not easy to troubleshoot. You need to know where to go. It took me quite awhile. It's like, "Okay, if it doesn't go smoothly here, then go find the documentation." Once you do it, it is not so bad. However, it is sometimes a steep learning curve on the troubleshooting part of it."
"One big pain point I have is the ASDM interface because it's Java, and sometimes, it's a bit buggy and has low performance. That's something that probably won't be improved because of backward compatibility."
"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 one thing that the ASAs don't have is a central management point. We have a lot of our environments on FTD right now. So, we are using a Firewall Management Center (FMC) to manage all those. The ASAs don't really have that, but they are easy to use if you physically go into them and manage them."
"There should be more integration with Microsoft Identity."
"This solution could be improved with more effective bandwidth. I found that when I enable DDoS detection for our clients, bandwidth is reduced. If DDoS detection is disabled, the bandwidth will be high, but it isn't secure. We recommend that customers enable DDoS detection, but if they need high bandwidth, we recommend Palo Alto and FortiGate instead of Sophos."
"I would like to have a more efficient login process."
"Sophos XG could improve the connectivity with Microsoft 365 or Azure Active Directory(AD). It doesn't work directly as other solutions do, such as Fortinet FortiGate. The client needs a separate AD server which is a problem."
"The installation could be faster and is longer than that of other solutions, lasting more than a month instead of five minutes."
"We recently did an upgrade on the Sophos XG firmware and we were surprised that after the upgrade, the automatic switch actually we were using did not work anymore."
"The VPN has been a persistent problem for us. It's not straightforward to configure."
"Even though things work on the back end, we have encountered bugs in the solution."
"Its price should be improved. Its features are pretty okay, but the price is the area where we have to fight more. They should do something about the price structure."
"There is room for improvement in the threat protection, data packet inspection, and performance of the solution. Generally, it's just a lower-end product. It does the job but doesn't do it very well."
"The UI and web view aren't nice."
"I would like to see more training become available for us."
"The solution can improve by adding a feature to tag a MAC address of a computer system in the policy and more IP configuration settings."
"Some of the configuration options are somewhat confusing."
"The VPN aspect of the WatchGuard Firebox is an area that could potentially benefit from improvement. We encountered difficulties while attempting to integrate Windows 11 laptops into the system, which resulted in unreliable connections. After some research, we discovered that this was primarily due to compatibility issues with Windows 11 and required a patch. However, it was still a challenge as it seemed that even when we tried to keep the laptops on Windows 10, they still exhibited the same issues as Windows 11 machines. Despite WatchGuard attributing the problem to Microsoft, we were eventually able to find a solution and all the machines are now functioning seamlessly."
"The next release should have better software and configuration systems that can also be used on Linux."
"This is a great product and offers great protection but they don't hear the customers' needs. They don't make improvements as per the customers' requests."
Sophos XG is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 73 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 23 reviews. Sophos XG is rated 8.2, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Sophos XG writes "Secure, duel switch capabilities, and good support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Easy to deploy and it provides useful data on threats ". Sophos XG is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate, pfSense, OPNsense, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and SonicWall TZ, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate, pfSense, Meraki MX, OPNsense and SonicWall NSa. See our Sophos XG vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
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