Presales Manager at provad
Real User
Good central management of encrypted devices, and strong anti-theft protection against data leakage
Pros and Cons
  • "Policy deployment is easy and quick to do."
  • "Having a DLP integrated with the encryption engine would be very good."

What is our primary use case?

We use this solution for encrypting our laptops.

This is an anti-theft solution because I can even encrypt the boot sector, which means that the user has to enter a password to unlock the operating system. If the laptop is stolen then everything is encrypted.

How has it helped my organization?

This solution helps us to improve security, especially for sensitive data. It helps to prevent the leakage of data from the laptops.

What is most valuable?

This solution allows us to easily manage devices from Sophos Central cloud.

Policy deployment is easy and quick to do.

This solution integrates well with the antivirus solution.

What needs improvement?

I would like to have more control over the files in the Sophos encryption system.

This solution needs to have more data loss prevention techniques. Having a DLP integrated with the encryption engine would be very good.

Buyer's Guide
Sophos SafeGuard
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Sophos SafeGuard. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
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For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using this solution for about a year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This is a stable solution. We have had no issues with it.

This solution is used on a daily basis.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The cloud version is easy to scale. I just add a new license with the number of users. It is already deployed, and there is no more configuration.

We have about ten technical people, including admins, and about seventy-five end-users. As the company grows, so will our use of this solution.

How are customer service and support?

The Sophos technical support is very helpful. We can open a chat or email them. They have a knowledge base for all cases of deployment.

Sometimes we have issues that take a long time to solve. They have a lot of teams, so once in a while, we open the case with one person but somebody else completes the ticket. This does not happen for the majority of the time.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did not use another solution prior to this one.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of this solution depends on the deployment model.

The cloud version is very straightforward to set up. Just select the package you want and send it to the client.

The on-premises version is very complicated. You have to first create the policy, then apply it and integrate your Active Directory, then install it on the machines. It's a very complicated process.

For the on-premises version, it takes about fifteen minutes to deploy after the initial setup and configuration. The initial configuration takes perhaps two days. It involves setting the policies for each of the users. 

What about the implementation team?

Our in-house team performed the implementation. There were five people involved.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Licensing for this solution is on a yearly basis. They tell you from day one how much it costs and what features you get. One of the great things about Sophos is if we have any added features that they send out, it will be included in the pricing. The price will not increase.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated other encryption solutions and we found that this was the easiest one to use, especially with cloud management.

Another reason that we chose this solution is that it is a standalone package. Kaspersky have an encryption solution, but it is part of a bundle with their endpoint solution. The advantage to standalone is that you can use it even if you don't have any Sophos endpoints. 

What other advice do I have?

We are using the cloud version of this solution because the on-premises version does not have anti-ransomware or machine learning capability.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to also use the cloud version, rather than the on-premises edition. This is especially true if they have teleworkers or mobile users that are often off-premises.

The security of our data is important. One of our teams has a person who lost their laptop, and the team was not using this solution so it was not encrypted. We consider that to be data leakage.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Information Security Officer at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Real User
A stable and scalable solution with excellent technical support
Pros and Cons
  • "I like the support most of all."
  • "The solution's ability to integrate with other solutions, such as a DLP, should be addressed."

What is our primary use case?

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. 

What is most valuable?

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. 

What needs improvement?

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

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable. 

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

How are customer service and support?

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.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was easy.

The deployment lasted four months. 

What about the implementation team?

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.

What was our ROI?

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

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated CrowdStrike, prior to going with Sophos SafeGuard. 

What other advice do I have?

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. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Sophos SafeGuard
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Sophos SafeGuard. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
768,857 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Project Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Secures the network, defends it from attacks, and is easy to install
Pros and Cons
  • "The Intercept X feature is the most valuable feature. You can't find this feature in other firewalls because Intercept X works as if it has an interaction between the endpoint and the firewall."
  • "Sophos SafeGuard is a German product. Sophos isn't really active in Europe. The Middle East, Africa, South Africa works with Sophos but their primary users aren't in Europe. They should market and push this solution to the European market."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case of this solution is for security and VPN connection.

The uses can vary per customer. For example, one customer wanted to protect their network, with VPN connectivity. Sophos has good features that customers know and like. It is also less expensive than other firewalls. Other customers, for example, wanted to publish their websites and their servers. They wanted to protect their servers and publish them on the internet. Another customer needs to have security because they were attacked by ransomware. 

What is most valuable?

The Intercept X feature is the most valuable feature. You can't find this feature in other firewalls because Intercept X works as if it has an interaction between the endpoint and the firewall. It makes a connection between the endpoint protection and the firewall. If Intercept X finds some behavior that's not right, it separates it and it secures the network to defend it from this attack. This is a good feature and development that Sophos implemented around five years ago.

What needs improvement?

Sophos SafeGuard is a German product. Sophos isn't really active in Europe. The Middle East, Africa, South Africa works with Sophos but their primary users aren't in Europe. They should market and push this solution to the European market. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for four years. It's been at my company for around eight years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This product is stable but we have had some complaints from other customers. There is a loop on the internet. Once we deploy Sophos in our topology or in our infrastructure, the behavior or their action creates a loop on the internet. Otherwise, it's easy to install and offers good security.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is very scalable. If you compare the price of Sophos to Fortinet or Cisco, it's as expensive. 

How are customer service and technical support?

I would rate their technical support eight out of ten. There's a bit of a delay in their response time to tickets. 

How was the initial setup?

The setup is very easy because you just need to make the arrangements for your interfaces and your network port. After that, you can make your policy and can publish the servers. You might need more technical support for the security and for the firewall. If you come from an advanced organization, it might be more difficult and not as easy at first.

The amount of time it will take will vary per customer. If they ask for network protection features it will take, for example, a maximum of one hour. But if your customer has a topology in his network and he needs to make certain policies and synchronization with Active Directory, that will take time. The deployment can take a few days. It depends on the customer. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The licensing costs depend on the series. For example, XG 85 can be around $200. If you go to ACC or to a four or five-year enterprise solution, you will find these devices can cost $10,000. It depends on the series. 

What other advice do I have?

Working with this solution will depend on your budget. If you purchase Sophos your data and your network will be secured. It's not more expensive than similar products. I recommend going with Sophos. 

I would rate Sophos a 7.5 out of ten because there are better firewalls out there. 

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.
PeerSpot user
Senior Technical Account Manager at Npo Sistemi
Real User
Complete end-to-end solution that protects and synchronizes your data
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is the synchronized security. It's a unique feature on the market at this time only offered by Sophos. As a reseller, we often win bids and get clients because of this unique trademark feature."
  • "In the next release, I would like to see more automation with the endpoint logging, but it's a special feature that is quite complicated to explain."

What is our primary use case?

The customer needs a complete end-to-end solution to protect and synchronize their data.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the synchronized security. It's a unique feature on the market at this time only offered by Sophos. As a reseller, we often win bids and get clients because of this unique trademark feature.

It's a complete end-to-end solution, which is a huge advantage. 

It's easy to explain to customers.

We don't have to go from one product to another to address the needs of our customers. Everything you need is in the solution, and the license is embedded in the firewall.

What needs improvement?

When you compare Sophos SafeGuard to Palo Alto and other enterprise firewalls solutions, Sophos doesn't have the same market. 

Palo Alto targets the SMB market and Sophos would like to approach the enterprise market, but it can be difficult to approach these customers without having the right offering.

Sophos has a rich roadmap to cover this area, but we are not aware of it, so it difficult for us to approach these customers without having the right offering.

In the next release, I would like to see more automation with the endpoint logging, but it's a special feature that is quite complicated to explain. There is a trick to implementing it. You have to implement some scripting into it.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been reselling Sophos SafeGuard for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This solution is quite stable, but that was not the case two years ago. There was an issue with the UTM Firewall to the XG Firewall. However, with this latest version, there haven't been any issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This solution is scalable.

The project system throughout the entre firewall is the same. This means that we don't have different versions from the smaller to the larger models, making the scalability quite simple.

Our clients have less than five hundred users.

How are customer service and technical support?

I have not contacted technical support. The service provider that we use filters the issues our customers have.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Approximately five years ago, I was using another solution but it was very different, and everything has changed. We are only dealing with Sophos software solutions. I can't compare it to a solution that I used five years ago. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is quite simple and straightforward.

The length of deployment depends on the environment of the customer and the number of endpoints. On average, it can take four to five days.

Normally, one person is more than enough to deploy this solution, but that person must have network and security experience.

What about the implementation team?

We have a small team in our company to implement this solution for our clients and on occasion, we leverage two other deployment partners.

The maintenance is provided by another service provider that we use, who specializes in this area. They monitor and upgrade this product. Along with the maintenance, they offer a service desk to support the security and the operating system.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The licenses are renewed every three years.

The licenses are dependant on the number of users and computers you have to protect.

This is a complete product that is offering full-feature bundles. 

On occasion, if a customer is looking for better performance with their email protection, I offer a separate appliance for email protection. These features can be extracted from the firewall and used as a separate dedicated appliance to address the issues surrounding email protection. This is for on-premises versions only and is available to everyone. This is an extra feature which would be an additional cost.

It's a good solution for the SMB market but not enterprise.

What other advice do I have?

Sophos is the leading brand for information security. 

Sophos is a complete solution that has a range of firewalls and all of the software bundles from the endpoint to the data center.

Along with our service providers and our team, who have a good understanding of the product, we use Sophos technicians to do the webcast for our customers. This occurs as part of the process, but typically not during the implementation phase.

Most of the time the customer doesn't require special features to be added. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user8430 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Administrator with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Sophos SafeGuard: Custom Info Items for Absolute Manage

Whenever we implement new software, I try to include some tracking that can be used in Absolute Manage. Recently we’ve been working to get our Macs encrypted using Sophos SafeGuard full disk encryption. To make some reporting that is easy for our guys to use, I created two simple custom info items.
The first custom info item is for tracking the current encryption status of the Mac. This will list three different states of the drive including Not Installed, Encrypting, and Encrypted. This status will update in Absolute Manage every time inventory is taken of the machine, or you can force it by gathering inventory.

1 #!/bin/sh
2
3 #Check to see if SafeGuard is installed
4 if [ -f "/usr/bin/sgadmin" ]; then
5 /usr/bin/sgadmin --status | grep -A 3 "Volume info" | grep "| 0" | awk -F '|' '{print $5}'
6 else
7 echo "Not installed"
8 fi
9 exit 0

The second custom info item will show the last time the computer checked into the Enterprise console with it’s encryption status. We do our own tracking of the Macs using this field in Absolute Manage, but management does it’s tracking of both PCs and Macs in a separate central console.

1 #!/bin/sh
2
3 #Check to see if SafeGuard is installed
4 if [ -f "/usr/bin/sgadmin" ]; then
5 /usr/bin/sgadmin --status | grep "Last contact" | awk '{print $4, $5, $6, $7, $8}'
6 else
7 echo "Not installed"
8 fi
9 exit 0
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
IT Manager at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees
Real User
Easy to deploy, good performance and monitoring capability
Pros and Cons
  • "The monitoring features are easy to use."
  • "I would like to see a support-cloud, where Sophos creates a single package that contains all of its products."

What is our primary use case?

We are a solution integrator, and this is one of the products that we supply to our clients.

The primary use of this solution is to protect data, and we have clients such as hotels who use it.

How has it helped my organization?

When our clients know that they have the ability to monitor their network security, they are satisfied.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the cloud-based supervision that is offered by Sophos Central.

The performance of this solution is good.

The monitoring features are easy to use.

What needs improvement?

I would like to see a support-cloud, where Sophos creates a single package that contains all of its products.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using this solution for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This solution is very stable. To this point, we have had no problem with any of our clients.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This is a scalable solution.

One of our clients is a hotel and they have thirteen users.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support for this solution is good, but we rarely contact them because we rarely see problems.

How was the initial setup?

This solution is very easy to configure and deploy.

What about the implementation team?

I perform the deployment myself.

What other advice do I have?

Sophos has another cloud platform that supports firewall management, and it is very easy to deploy.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Owner at a marketing services firm with 1-10 employees
Real User
A reliable firewall for internet security
Pros and Cons
  • "Security-wise, it's one of the best."
  • "The integration could be a little better."

What is our primary use case?

Sophos SafeGuard is a firewall; we use it for filtering and internet security.

Sophos SafeGuard constantly updates, so I am always using the latest version.

Within our organization, there are slightly less than 10 Sophos SafeGuard users.

What is most valuable?

Security-wise, it's one of the best. I don't think there is much room for improvement.

What needs improvement?

The integration could be a little better.

I use this solution frequently and I can't think of anything I would change.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Sophos SafeGuard for two years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Sophos SafeGuard is both scalable and stable.

How are customer service and technical support?

I don't require any technical support so I don't have much experience with them.

How was the initial setup?

The installation was very simple, I did it by myself. It only took roughly one hour.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Very good user experience and stability with good reporting features
Pros and Cons
  • "The user experience and the quality of the features are good."
  • "The tutorials need to be simplified. The existing ones need to be easier to follow and we could use some tutorials for basic setups. They should aim to be more like Cisco, which offers very good tutorials and materials."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution for file encryption.

What is most valuable?

The reporting and file encryption are the solution's most valuable features.

The user experience and the quality of the features are good.

What needs improvement?

The tutorials need to be simplified. The existing ones need to be easier to follow and we could use some tutorials for basic setups. They should aim to be more like Cisco, which offers very good tutorials and materials.

If there was a way to automate the configuration, that would be ideal.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for almost one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We haven't attempted to scale up yet, so I can't really comment on the scalability of the solution. Right now we have about 50 people using it.

How are customer service and technical support?

We've never needed to contact technical support.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward. When we deployed it, it was very fast. Even the configuration was easy. We had everything done within a week. It could have even been done faster, but the distributor was waiting on some information from the customer. We only needed two people for deployment.

What about the implementation team?

We had the assistance of a distributor for the implementation.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate the solution nine out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Sophos SafeGuard Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: March 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Sophos SafeGuard Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.