Sophos SafeGuard Reviews

We primarily use the solution for endpoint encryption. 

It's a straightforward solution.

The solution is pretty simple to use.

We haven't had any real issues with the product.

Technical support has been helpful and they are responsive. 

The encryption is very good.

Overall, Sophos is a great product.

BitLocker comes from the OS license with Windows. It's a free solution. However, Sophos is a product we need to pay for. Therefore, using it is more expensive for our organization. It's also, in general, a pricey option. We'd like to lower costs.

Sophos requires separate BAU operations and separate infrastructure. We require a server and few other things, as well as portals. However, a solution like BitLocker is integrated with the CCM now. It doesn't require any other infrastructure. 

It would be ideal if the solution had different features within one agent. 

Sophos has been used in our bank for between three to four years (or more) at this point. We've used it for a while. 

We have about 24,000 users on the solution right now. We have many users in our organization.

The technical support has been very good. They are helpful and responsive. We are satisfied with their level of support.

We need to pay for this solution currently, however, if we switch to Bitlocker, it would be free as it's a part of Microsoft's OS. 

We are currently doing a POC with Bitlocker. I want to decommission the Sophos Safeguard and enable BitLocker for my bank. I'm working on that right now.

We're basically an end-user. We're a bank. We have a vendor the provides resources to us. 

I'm a solution architect and not fully working on the solution directly, per se. I'm looking for a way to switch over from Sophos to Bitlocker. 

Whether or not this is the right solution depends on each individual company. They have to decide if it is compatible and comparable with a paid solution or a free solution. I advise users to go with a free solution, such as BitLocker, as when we compare Sophos and BitLocker both cover the same aspects such as encryption. We can do what we need to do with both solutions and yet we only have to pay for one.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. It's a very good product overall. The main reason I would like to switch is based on the cost. If I don't have to pay for something, I would prefer not to. 

I have deployed a couple of Sophos firewalls for our clients recently. We are customers of Sophos. 

The solution has the intelligence to block a virus attack and prevent it from moving across the system. It's easy to use and a very reliable firewall, functionally and mechanically.

The solution lacks connectivity to Azure AD so it can connect to the regular internal Windows AD server but there's no direct connection to Azure AD. That would be a product improvement that needs to be implemented given that almost everyone is now on the cloud.  

I've been using this solution for nine years. 

From what I have seen, this is a very scalable product. It's a major plus point for them.

I've had a very good experience with customer service, particularly recently as I've also been managing other Sophos firewalls for customers.

Positive

It's worth taking the time to figure out how the solution can fit your needs. Sophos satisfies a large number of requirements and gives you unified security. It's something that has become a standard function with all other solutions in the market including with Palo Alto, SonicWall. I think Sophos leads in that space and if you're looking at a unified security function, then I recommend Sophos because of the protection from the endpoint to the gateway. It's a strong and capable system. 

I rate this solution nine out of 10. 

We have several use cases for SafeGuard, primarily for its security features. We also use it for the VPN and plan filtering. We are customers of Sophos and I'm head of information technology product support.

Sophos SafeGuard offers one of the best VPNs I've seen. The solution is very good in terms of securities because all information is protected and encrypted with very good anti-viral applications. It's wonderful.

The dashboards currently lack sufficient information. For example, when we want to look for accessibilities we have to go in-depth and then run the scripts and only then access what we're looking for. It could all be available in the reports and save a lot of time. I want to be able to know who is using what, to check visibilities.

I've been using this solution for two years. 

The stability is good. 

Scalability depends on the parameters. The solution is scalable it's just a question as to what level. It will be different for every situation. 

We are happy with the technical support team because they are accessible locally.

The initial setup is straightforward. We had some assistance initially but after we received guidelines from the technical team, it was easy. Anyone can do it with a couple of hours of training.

Licensing is reasonably priced, particularly when you compare it to a solution like Semantic which is more expensive. Sophos is an affordable product.

SafeGuard is good for medium to large size organizations. 

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

We are using the new version of Sophos SafeGuard. 

Our endpoint users make use of three environments which we protect with the help of the solution. 

I like the support most of all. In the past we had issues with it, but are now very pleased with it. It is very good. 

The solution's ability to integrate with other solutions, such as a DLP, should be addressed. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable. 

We do not have plans to increase the usage at present, perhaps in three year's time. 

I like the support most of all. In the past we had issues with it, but are now very pleased with it. It is very good.

Were I to come across an alternate solution, I would switch. In the past, we made use of Kasperki, but we switched to Sophos SafeGuard because we felt it to be better. 

The initial setup was easy.

The deployment lasted four months. 

We use six or seven people, a combination of engineers and technicians, for the deployment and a technical support staff, consisting of 40 technicians, for the maintenance. There is much work involved, but we handle this.

For the deployment, we made use solely of the technical support that we had from the Sophos company.

I have not seen an ROI, return on our investment. 

We evaluated CrowdStrike, prior to going with Sophos SafeGuard. 

Our company provides protection for 3,000 endpoint users. 

We are customers of the solution. 

Our solution is on hybrid cloud, with our servers being on-premises and the updates and sandbox being on the cloud. 

I recommend that a person have a good implementation team which is very familiar with the solution. One who implements with a DLP solution should be careful with the DLL. 

I rate Sophos SafeGuard as a nine out of ten. 

We use the solution primarily for email scanning.

The malware protection and the scanning features are most valuable in this solution.

There are times that this solution takes up too much memory that needs to be resolved. If it is not fixed it will definitely create issues in the future.

In an upcoming release, there should be more reports on the health status of the systems that we could fix, such as memory health, CPU utilization, and CPU health. These types of additions would be a great help.

I have been using the solution for approximately six months.

I have found the solution to be stable.

The solution has been scalable. Most of my clients are enterprise-size organizations using this solution.

Since I have been using the solution I have not had any errors or any issues I would need to contact support about.

I have used Trend Micro and Symantec antivirus previously. We have had a lot of issues with Trend Micro antivirus. We were facing so many issues related to the support and integration with some applications. There were times when applications would stop running. The solution also took up too many resources that were impacting the system's performance which is why we needed to move on from that particular antivirus.

It would be great if the price of the solution was lower than the current price. If we are to sell this particular solution to smaller businesses and not just enterprise businesses, it needs to be lower.

I rate Sophos SafeGuard a seven out of ten.

It is used in environments where there are mobile executives and the data can't be compromised. For example, if a laptop is lost or stolen, you have to ensure that the data is not compromised. I have deployed it at a motor company in the Bay area for securing the local laptops. It is used at a hospital for securing medical records and CFO-related files. It is also used at a Law firm for encrypting pleadings and legal documents. 

I like its ease of use the most. The management console is really nice. I like having one pane of glass that does everything. It does the Sophos anti-virus and encryption. Everything that you need is in one place. It is easy to use, and it is also pretty fast.

It provides some pretty good details, and it lets you know who has access to a file. You can also add additional people to the encrypted documents, which is pretty good. Its stability and performance are also very good.

It just needs a little bit more on the reporting side. Its reporting can be improved a little bit in terms of being able to know that things are in the right status. I should be able to pull a report to make sure that everything is all right. 

It could also have cloud integration. At the time I was using it, it wasn't a cloud product.

I've been in the IT industry for several years. I work with a lot of different companies, and I've deployed and managed Sophos SafeGuard at quite a few companies over a period of about three years.

Its stability and performance were good. I never had any crashes. I didn't notice it causing any performance problems or high CPU usage, making applications slower. 

We had Sophos in the image. We rolled out the machines, so it was already there. It was already part of our base image, and then for servers, we use SCCM. Sophos also has its own console that you can use for deployments, but we didn't use that.

Most of our clients are large businesses. Most of the time, smaller businesses can't afford to call in consultants to roll out stuff for them.

I have never used their tech support.

Different companies used different solutions. They usually switched when their license agreements ran out. The company for which I did the biggest installation had ESET and McAfee ePO. I removed both ESET and McAfee ePO and placed two different environments with Sophos. This switch was a result of viruses happening and not getting caught by their protection systems.

The initial setup of Sophos is also easier than other solutions such as Trend Micro and BitLocker. The setup of both these solutions is much more complex. If you try to go old school with PGP, it has a command-line setup, and it gets a lot more complex.

I am currently using BitLocker, which is a little bit more difficult. You have to use some power show commands. Sometimes, you have to use scripting and create GTOs. There are many different places you have to go to for configuring policies and rules to make it all work. In Sophos SafeGuard, everything that you need is in one place.

It was pretty straightforward. If you don't know how encryption works, it could be a little bit complex, but it would still be easier to do it with Sophos than any other tool in the market, such as Trend Micro and BitLocker.

It is a good product. I would advise calling an expert to deploy it. 

I would rate Sophos SafeGuard an eight out of ten.

I'm the head of security at our company and we are customers of Sophos SafeGuard. 

The valuable feature is the intrusion detection system, the firewall itself.

The Office 360 integration could be improved, it's not so straightforward. It's been a challenge. When I moved from my mail in-house, on-prem, to Office 360 on cloud, I had a lot of challenges getting my mail to pass through the firewall. That's something I'm currently working on.

Additional features I'd like to see would be more help results to the product. Maybe they could provide a way to train on the product, provide tutorials that could be easily accessed for people to easily understand the product quickly. I think that would help. The issue is not always the product but the configuration and the know-how to easily manage the system that sometimes make you not get the best out of the system. It's a matter of making resources available. 

I've been using this solution for five years. 

It's a stable solution, I haven't had any challenges except when I was doing the migration.

The solution is scalable, we have over 500 staff using it. 

We purchased the solution in Ghana through a rep who has not been helpful. The company doesn't provide any support, we do everything in-house. If necessary, I sometimes go to the community to see if somebody has reported something that can help us. 

The price could be lower. I think it's one of the disadvantages of the solution. 

I would recommend that people choosing this solution find the right technical people or  vendor to provide support and assistance to ensure the product is working fine.

I would rate this product a six out of 10. 

We primarily use the solution for endpoint encryption within our organization.

The management and the removable media encryption are two of the solution's most valuable features, in my opinion. They're very useful.

It's quite easy to integrate Safeguard with BitLocker.

In the latest versions, from Windows 8 onwards, everything is encrypted using BitLocker. What we require is key management, and in particular, policy management surrounding keys. There should be an option wherein I should be able to set the policy to exploit the BitLocker POA keys, and able to manage and reset the keys. Right now, the solution doesn't have this as an option.

From version eight, Windows 8 onwards, SafeGuard doesn't work 100% of the time. So we have to use BitLocker for the encrypting. Only the key management is done by SafeGuard. 

When you have the PPM chipset, you can have the power-on authentication, when you boot up your machine, you can set the six-digit passcode. As of right now, SafeGuard can't manage the six-digit passcode in terms of the expiration, and I need that added as a feature.

I have used the solution for maybe more than five years.

We've found the solution quite effective in terms of stability. There aren't bugs or glitches. We don't experience crashes. It's reliable.

Our organization hasn't run into any issues with scaling. If a company needs to expand its usage, it should be able to do so quite easily.

Currently, it's just my team that handles Safeguard in the company. Not everyone in the organization has access to it. We do use it daily.

We have contacted technical support in the past, and so far I can say that we've been completely satisfied. They've been very helpful and we don't have any complaints to speak of.

The initial setup was quite easy. We didn't find it to be complex.

Deployment doesn't take much time. It depends on the hard disk. Most installations shouldn't take more than thirty minutes at a maximum to finalize.

Our team was able to deploy the solution ourselves. We didn't require an integrator, consultant, or reseller to assist us in this endeavor.

We're merely a customer of the solution. We don't have a special relationship with Sophos.

We mostly deploy the solution on-premises, and only occasionally on the cloud.

I don't think I have much advice to give to other companies in regard to this product. We use it to manage BitLocker and find it very easy to set up. Organizations shouldn't have trouble implementing it into their business. We never have had issues with it in terms of implementation.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.