Sophos Firewall Reviews

We use it for VPN connectivity with remote sites, as well as general IPS and IDS.

It's a satisfactory solution so far, no problems. It's very easy to use, and we have technical support for any issues, so it's quite good.

It's cost-effective. We are not that big a company. It gives us the features that we need.

• The ease of setting up the VPN connection. 
• The fact they have the cloud management option, I can manage it on a cloud platform. So anywhere I am, I can always manage the firewall.
• The user interface is very user-friendly, so it's very easy for the administrator to make any policy changes.

I would like the update process to be easier, to update the firmware of the boxes. I think it's much better automatically than having to do it manually: Download the file, do network discovery. If they can make the update process much more automatic that would help.

The stability, so far, is actually quite good. I think the only issue we have had is some flapping on the connection, but it was a bug. The support is quite good, so the issue was resolved in no time at all. We have not had many issues at all. It's been working fine.

I don't think this applies in our own case because we just bought the medium-range box, so it's adequate for our needs.

It's very good, very responsive, and they resolve our issues in no time at all.

We were previously using a different solution, a Cisco ASA firewall, but it was not a next-generation of firewall, next-generation meaning it can do unified threat management. We wanted a new solution that would also give us next-generation features, like anti-malware and end-point management and the like. That informed our choice of Sophos.

When selecting a vendor, the stability of the solution and then the technical support are very important. Also, the cost-to-reward ratio, the value we get from the product compared to what we pay for it. In addition, ease of management; how easy is it to manage? If it's too complex to manage it's a problem because you don't want to spend too much time managing it.

It was completely straightforward, but our internal network is not that complex.

We evaluated Sophos vs Fortinet and Sophos vs Cisco. 

The cost of Sophos was more competitive compared to the rest. We also considered the management and it was easier to manage than the rest. That's how we came to our conclusion.

I would rate it an eight out of 10. I don't rate it "perfect" because it can always improve. But the features that come along with Sophos are very, very extensive. It gives me so many options, the ability to remotely manage my firewall from anywhere, given the cloud portal. The solution hasn't given us too many problems at all, and even when we did have an issue, it was resolved.

My advice is to take advantage of the trials, they have a trial on their website where you can see how the cloud management works; you can have a free account for one month and play around with it and see how easy it is to manage. That way you can know if it can handle the services you are going to require. Take advantage of training on their website as well. Check the industry ratings, they are pretty highly rated.

The most valuable feature, according to the setup we have at our work place here, is the flexibility of the system or the firmware that's running the appliance. It's so flexible, performing multiple rules with different configurations. According to the set up here, we need to implement several firewalls with different access levels, because we have a variety of users. For this requirement, it's very flexible and very easy to use.

It is performing well. However, the only challenges that we are facing are the effectiveness with blocking the proxy and tuneling applications, aside from  proxy and similar applications. So the application filter on the product is not really performing 100%. Every now and then there are some updates that are happening on such applications, and it takes time until it gets the appropriate updates and becomes capable of capturing such applications and blocking them.

A new feature I would really like to see would be some sort of an enhanced application filter with greater efficiency when it comes to the applications that can bypass firewall policies. These applications are really a nightmare. Once they are on the network and not detected, or the appliance is not really successful in capturing them and unblocking them, the bandwidth gets wasted all the time.

It's stable. So far we haven't experienced any instability issues with. 

As for scalability, I think it is a bit limited. We did a sizing exercise before the purchase. But that was just to fit our current needs. There was no room for having an option to upgrade the device. The only option that we have if we are grow in the near future, is to go for another model with higher specs, which is actually more expensive. In other words it doesn't have that modularity feature. 

From time to time I use technical support provided by the seller and sometimes I use the online support, but not that much actually. It has only been for a very few issues. And the support I have received is not bad.

Before Sophos there was mix of various legacy solutions that were not really considered firewall grade. The only specific thing that was used was a software-based firewall, but it was used on a very limited scale and only temporarily.

It was very straightforward. 

The other vendors on the list were Fortinet and Palo Alto. Although it was really great with outstanding features, Palo Alto was far beyond our budget. And as for Fortinet, I was not really happy with the ease of use of the firewall and the features that were coming with it. Sophos was better compared to Fortinet.

When it comes to selecting a vendor I think the most important thing would be the level of support and how fast they can respond in critical cases.

I would rate Sophos at eight out of 10. I cannot give it the best rating because there are the issues that I mentioned, and I believe there are other products on the market that are much better, like Palo Alto. And there is another product that I've come across recently, which is called Clavister. It's a Swedish product, if I'm not mistaken. They are current with features and have more stability. So for Sophos, it would be the appropriate rating for the time being, unless they come up with some new features and add some enhancements.

There is no straightforward advice in this case because there are many factors that may limit the person who wants the solution. Budget is an issue. If you don't have any budget limitations I would recommend going for Palo Alto. If not, consider Sophos or Clavister.

My clients gain efficiency in protecting against attacks from malware such as ransomware and hacker attacks. It also provides them efficient internet access control, and full visibility of ports, applications, and websites.

• IPS
• Very efficient
• Web Filter
• Captive Portal with Voucher and Application Control.

It could offer other important functions such as a DNS Filter for blocking botnet networks.

No stability issues.

No scalability issues.

Satisfactory.

I still use Fortigate, also Sophos UTM. As I'm a solution consultant, I have different clients where each solution fits the environment.

Simple and easy.

Excellent product, meets most of the security needs of companies of various sizes. You can buy it without fear.

1. Internet security, where we have one single point of console; where I can manage my endpoint and my gateway. 
2. Any messages coming in, I am getting the intermission immediately. 
3. If my endpoint is getting infected, I get to know. 
4. If my file is getting infected, I get to know from a single pane point of view.

The product has been upgraded, and one of the features we were looking for has been incorporated into the newer version. It has allowed me to customize for my needs as well.

The past six months.

Nothing. No issues. It is quite stable.

This is a little bit of a challenge. Scalability is one issue with the hardware device and hardware files. Any kind of hardware file which has been delivered has been a challenge.

Sophos is being preferred only because of their technical support. The tech support there is very good. It is a five-star support system that they have there.

Our previous solution was Check Point. I switched to Sophos just because of the pricing issue.

It is very user-friendly to set up. Very straightforward.

Pricing is very competitive in the market.

Only Check Point. That was the one product which I evaluated.

The support is awesome. QA is very simple, and the administration is very straightforward.

For one, its ease of use is the most valuable feature. It's very easy to look at the logs and troubleshoot issues as they arise. Things just make sense and it is a very intuitive interface.

It is easier to use than Cisco ASA, so it has reduced our SLAs by a considerable margin.

The VPN and central management need to be improved, but that's being nit-picky.

The IPsec VPNs are a little on the buggy side and you sometimes have to jump through hoops to get it to work. When I looked at them last, they were still in development for the centralized management of the firewalls, so when I saw it, it was very much in its infancy.

One more thing to add to what they can improve is the firewall policy presentation, they have their own special way of doing it which takes time for some to get used to, especially if you’re used to Cisco ASA.

I have used this solution for about a year.

There were no stability issues.

There were no scalability issues, it is very scalable.

I would rate the technical support a 10/10; they are very professional. I know a couple of those guys over there on a first name basis.

Previously, we were using another solution. However, we switched as we needed to upgrade our infrastructure.

The setup was pretty straightforward. They had someone come in, walk us through it and train us on the platform.

Get the professional support contract; it is well-worth it and those guys know their product very very well.

It is a very solid product, easy to use and implement.

• URL Filtering: because of the importance of controlling what and individual might access from the organization’s network. Sophos XG has 90+ categories, providing a level of granularity that eliminates the need to create customized categories.
• IPS (Intrusion Prevention System): because of the importance of preventing hackers from using exploits and other mechanisms that might compromise the network
• Anti-malware: Sophos XG comes with two anti-malware engines: its own and Avira, making the UTM more effective at catching malicious code.
• Control Center: an interface crammed with the most vital information like security issues, appliance performance, and Internet link status.

With a very intuitive and easy-to-use interface, it made it much easier to setup access and business rules, VPNs and to identify issues like Internet link outages and security issues.

Sophos XG lacks link load balancing options like ratio and spill over, both useful in some scenarios.

I also think they might consider improving the RAM of some of the appliances, since there are processes that are very memory intensive.

Lastly, I would say packet monitor is another area for improvement as it lacks capabilities like exporting the capture from inside the GUI tool.

A year and a half.

Yes, on the SFOS Version 15, I had to upgrade the firmware of an appliance since it had a problem with the JAMVM process (an apparently known issue in which that process consumes almost all of the CPU resources).

No.

I would say that Sophos Brazil has an excellent support team.

No.

It was very straightforward. And I credit that to the great job Sophos did on its OS interface, providing different ways of accessing the same option, hiding some of the complexities of a firewall system, and deploying it with many pre-built policies, objects and rules that for most of the environments makes it unnecessary to spend hours tuning the system.

Sophos is clearly trying to position itself as the market leader in the UTM niche. One way they are doing this is by having an aggressive pricing policy and this makes it a good moment to start using their products.

Yes, FortiGate.

Try to have the help of a Sophos Partner for the correct sizing and purchasing of an adequate licensing bundle.

In addition, I would recommend having a PoC in place in order to make sure that the solution is what the organization needs.

It is important to notice that the XG is available for a 30 days free trial and that there are virtual appliances available for the main virtualization platforms on the market.

Sophos RED, because this makes it very easy to deploy new sites, without the need of static IP addresses and a completely new firewall setup. The rule-based use is the same as if it were internal to the central site.

Web Protection, because this feature implements rules on user/group basis and this is done on the firewall rules itself. So it is easy to check.

Sophos Sandstorm, because it implements sandboxing so downloaded files are checked by hash or checked by unpacking it in within the Sophos Cloud.

With its central management console, it implements an intuitive management console with change tracking. So it’s easy to see who has made changes and to keep track of changes.

Email Protection has room for improvement. It doesn’t have an intuitive rule base. I would much like it to be like the Sophos UTM software. The level of detail in the settings is much too low.

I have been personally using this product for almost two years now.

In our business, we have been using the product alongside the Sophos SG for more than a year now.

The first firmware versions were not that stable and had a lot of bugs in it. From Version SF 16 and above, the stability has improved a lot.

We didn’t encounter any issues with scalability as of yet.

Technical support, I would rate it as a six, because the technical expertise level from this product is below the level I’m used to. Also, the response times have increased since the launch of Sophos XG.

We used the Sophos UTM software. We did switch for some customers to the Sophos XG solution because of the customer’s needs.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. The only downside is that a Sophos Account is necessary to activate the box. It has an intuitive setup to take care of the basic settings needed to connect to the internet.

Pricing of the hardware box is the same as Sophos UTM, but the licenses are a little more expensive. The most used license is the Enterprise Guard, it implements Network Protection and Web Protection in a bundle with support.

We evaluate other options for our customers constantly. We select the product which is best suited to the situation. We evaluate Sophos UTM, Sophos XG, and Meraki.

The product has much potential to be one of the best on the market according to bang for bucks. But look critically to the features you want and the features that are available with this product. Don’t select this product just yet for email filtering, because it is underdeveloped.

• Web and Application filter
• Wireless integration
• Email protection with encryption
• Reporting and Dashboards

Mostly it's related to visibility as this platform allow us to see literally everything when it comes to traffic in a very easy and intuitive way.

I would like to see the possibility to add or block some content directly from the log interface or the live view of the interface so that if I see that an IP address is consuming a lot of bandwidth, I can right click on it and set some kind of policy. Everything else its perfect. 

There was no issue with the deployment.

There has been no issue with the stability.

There have been no issues scaling it to our needs.

Contact a good partner with experience and follow the online KB for doubts. its almost everything there