Sophos XG Reviews

The most valuable feature is the VPN aspect. It has been beneficial for my users who work from home. Connectivity and from a security aspect.  The security aspect of this is quite good. It measures up to the standard that I expect.

From a Firewall perspective and then user management, easy to manage and the user experience, profile, are giving me what I am expecting.

During this COVID era, the VPN has really been helpful. We can seamlessly connect to the applications remotely and work from home.

In the Firewall, the Intrusion Prevention System can be improved. Now because COVID has come to stay, people tend to work from home, and cybersecurity has been on the high side. 

It can improve more on the security aspect of this so that it can combat any major threat or common bug. I am not saying that the security has become compromised, as it is usually active, but they can improve on it.

Local and technical support can be improved.

When firmware updates are complete, there were issues with connectivity and VPN users. Recently, I stopped updating the firmware because I didn't want to obstruct the connectivity of the staff working remotely at different locations. 

I have stopped doing any updates until the issue can be addressed.

I have been using Sophos XG for approximately 12 months.

When you compare with Barracuda, Sophos is quite a bit cheaper. 

With Sophos, you can upgrade on what you need and upgrade as time goes on. I think that it's relatively open, compared to other products.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are a solution provider and Sophos XG is one of the security products that we implement for our customers. We always provide them with the latest version.

The number of ports, especially on the entry-level appliances, should be increased.

The price of adding ports should be reduced to make it more competitive.

The vendor needs to create materials to show the differences between Sophos products and those from other vendors.

Network management needs to be included in the package.

As it is now, it only supports ten multiple users, which is something that should be increased.

I have been working with Sophos XG for approximately two years.

This solution is stable.

This is a scalable product and we have approximately 150 users.

We get our support from the local distributor.

Prior to Sophos XG, we used products from Fortinet and Forcepoint. 

The Forcepoint product is doing well. We have a different perimeter firewall for our data center that uses it because we use different vendors for different sites.

This is an on-premises appliance and the installation is straightforward. It can be deployed in less than an hour. However, according to the number of users and the number of ports that will be connected, the design may vary. This makes it difficult to estimate the time required to do a full implementation of the product.

We have four people in charge of maintenance, although they do not work exclusively with Sophos. We have another appliance from another vendor. The entire team, including their manager, is about 10 people.

The price is in the mid-range and it is very good for small to medium-sized businesses. One license opens everything.

Overall, this is a good product and I would recommend it for small to mid-sized customers.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I'm the CTO of our company and we are customers of Sophos. 

I've found that the valuable features are the interface and the security, both are really great. 

The security of the solution could be improved by making it more intuitive and it should have a background reputation service for classification of websites for content filtering. It's a service which defines the type of websites enabling me to do my content filtering in a much more effective and efficient way.

They really need to include some kind of a client app for mobiles so that firewalls and all the metrics can be accessed directly on the phone; some kind of administrative application on the phone, maybe on an iOS or Android.

I've been using this solution for over four years. 

This is a stable solution, it's a nice robust firewall. We love using it. 

The solution is scalable, we have around 700 end users and 10 technical people on staff. 

We are satisfied with the technical support but having said that, we didn't need much support because the menus and all the online documentation is self-explanatory. There was no failure so we didn't have to actually log a call with Sophos. 

We didn't previously use another solution before implementing Sophos. We chose it by specification and the reputation it has in the market.

The initial setup was a little complex because of the kind of configuration that we were looking at, the way the firewall had to be configured was slightly complex. We carried out the implementation ourselves and it took a maximum two days. 

I would recommend this solution but would suggest that before buying any firewall, it's important to assess your expectations and then match it with the specification. You will not be disappointed if you do this.

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

We essentially use Sophos XG to protect our customers. Most of our customers use remote VPN connections. They also use the WAF protection for exposed internet WEB servers.

The web application firewall or WAF is very useful. Web application firewalls help keep your servers safe from hackers by scanning activity and identifying probes and attacks.
Using the Web Application Firewall (WAF), also known as reverse proxy, Sophos
UTM lets you protect your webservers from attacks and malicious
behavior like cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, directory
traversal, and other potent attacks against your servers.
You can define external addresses (virtual webservers) which should be
translated into the "real" machines in place of using the DNAT rule(s).
From there, servers can be protected using a variety of patterns and
detection methods.

This function has been completely re-developed in XG, relatively of the UTM-9 version, and it works fine. I protect many internet web servers (IIS) for my customers with this function, due to of a lot of attempted attacks. It's a very useful and relatively simple to implement in Sophos XG.

Obviously, like all security systems, it is not a "fire and forget" configuration. It is necessary to properly analyze the system to be protected, create an appropriate policy and monitor its behavior once activated.

https://support.sophos.com/sup...

I think Sophos XG can improve some annex features. Like in DHCP, we can't make IP reservations in the range. We must reserve out of the range, which is not good. It will not be the same as the DHCP function in a Windows Server. We can't make an IP reservation in the range of the DHCP in the Sophos.

Better in the next release? I hope...

Sophos can also improve the debugging of the WAF function and provide a better resolution in the log, in the attached WEB log. The initial error doesn't appear. You must tail the console log to find the source pattern, cause of the error.

I have been using Sophos XG for about tree years.

Sophos XG is stable. I don't encounter problems that are typical with broken systems. But bugs in the system exists. Last example, I discovered a bug is in the asymmetric routing implementation. In a specific network configuration, asymmetric routing, with sub-net 25 doesn't work, but mask 24 and mask 26 works!!

But this is just a bug, and Sophos' support is very good to correct quickly, ASAP.

I only had a break function once because of the appliance BIOS. The Sophos support send me a new BIOS very quickly, and the problem was resolved.

I have a lot of issues with Sophos technical support. I still have some pending issues that need to be resolved. It's very odd in the beginning because your first contact is with the sub-part of another sub-part of Sophos based in India or Pakistan. It's very odd to have a quick connection with the second level or third level engineer at Sophos in UK.

I have personal contact with some security managers and the sub-part manager of Sophos support. When they don't resolve a problem quickly, I send an email, or I call my contacts Sophos UK, and it happens! They have good reactivity.

We start with Sophos UTM-9, the old version of Sophos firewalls, and then we switched to the XG.

The initial setup of the last version of Sophos XG is good. The initialization is very simple, but you must prepare it. You need an Sophos customer account , on the web cell, to declare easy a firewall.

It'll ask for an account, and you can create it in the interface, but it's better to prepare it before in the Sophos site, to have the account ready, for the first initialization of the firewall.

The deployment time depends on the system's complexity, the number of ISPs, the number of sub-nets, WAF functions and VPNs. 

It's normally very easy for a little company. A retail company with 20-30 computer-users, and a simple connection to the internet, it'll take about four to six-hours to deploy. If you need to fine-tune it, maybe two hours more. So like eight hours or a day to deploy.

Sophos XG isn't expensive compared to Check Point. Sure, Check Point is the Rolls-Royce of firewalls: It's great, it's fun, technically good tunned, but it's very expensive. 

But the specs and technical side of Sophos XG are close to Check Point, and the price is lower. It's better for our customers. I can do the same complex configurations with Sophos XG that I used to do on Check Point firewalls.

The main difference between Sophos XG and Check Point is keylogging and working with clouds. Both FortiGate and Watchguard doesn't have  in log packet analyzer to do so deeply. 

For me personally, Check Point firewall is the best firewall, because the log console is the power key of the firewalls. But Sophos XG is the main challenger of Check Point, I think. You can open the debugging packet analyzer, like a Wireshark, directly in the WEB log console. This function is a powerful tool and must be discovered, because it's very useful for quick debugging.

If I had to rank them, it's Check Point first, second, Sophos XG, and in third with FortiGate and Watchguard. We chose Sophos XG because it's much cheaper than Check Point.

I think it's very important to choose the right appliance first. Implementing a lot of things like VPN, IPS strong protection and WAF functions will stress more the appliance CPU. It depend also with the number of connections and number of users too.

Sophos XG is a lot of fun because you can change the appliance model without changing the configuration. You can back-up the configuration of the old appliance and import into the new appliance without spending hour for migration. It's powerful, and the new system is quickly operational.

Another key is VPN LAN to LAN in SSL, allowing connections to be set up much faster. Is this the end of the old IPSEC protocol? No, but it is a function which increases the versatility of the Sophos XG firewall.

Last, but not least, the virtual appliance works perfectly, in private or public clouds. Very simple to implement, work perfectly.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Sophos XG a nine. 

We were able to integrate the solution using existing infrastructure installed, such as different firewalls and security software. We have integrated the solution in multiple sectors, for example, the education and banking sectors. 

UTM appliances have generally improved organization networks and given away to multiple link management, identity management, and easy firewall options. SOPHOS has a better GUI and dashboard which can be easily understood and managed in an organization.

The solution was able to be integrated well with exciting hardware and software and in multiple business sectors.

With the proliferation of fiber connectivity becoming available at our homes, consumers should not have to go and buy another module for fiber to ethernet converters or another device to get the fiber options. I understand all UTM models should have direct SFP ports available so that FFTH is directly terminated to UTM for better management and uptime. 

I have been using the solution for the past five years.

I have found it to be a stable product.

I can say it is more stable rather than scalable. I do not think they have the ability for scalability with the options currently included esp in SMB segment. However, if they did have better options then I believe the product would have better scalability.

Some of our clients have been enterprise and SMB customers. Overall the range of our clients has been between medium and enterprise clients.

The customer support is not that good. We found the support to be extremely slow in response.

I rate Sophos XG support a three out of ten.

We have used other products as well and we understand those products work well which has better and local support. In addition, it depends on the company's focus. SOPHOS has focused on small to enterprise customers but support needs improvement to be in the market. SOPHOS channel partnership program needs also improvement and commitment so that System Integrators and partners are able to pitch the products well in the market. 

Setup is good and the integration is very easy. The technology creates several good products.

We do the deployment and implementation of the solutions.

They should include fiber SFP ports on smaller product models as well and the tools should be improved for scalability.

I can definitely recommend the product because it is good. There is no doubt.

I rate Sophos XG a 6 out of 10.

We use it for monitoring our web access, providing authentication and for security purposes.

We get good usage out of the VPN features and its capability; it is a great feature.

In terms of improvement, one of the features we are having a hard time getting a hang of is MAC addressing, like when we assign IP addresses to a specific MAC address. That is something that can be improved. For the next release, I think, it should have better feature integration.

I have been using Sophos XG for seven years. 

It is a stable solution.

The solution is scalable. We use the product for around 70 to 100 users.

The support that we used was great.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. The setup took around one to two weeks. 

We did all of the deployment by ourselves and we use one person for maintenance.

I think, for the XG, I think the MAC addressing. We were having a very hard time assigning MAC addresses with specific IP.

We haven't chosen any other product, besides Sophos.

I would rate Sophos XG an eight out of ten. 

I use it for one of our universities in Palestine. It's an Arabic university and there were about more than 10,000 students. So, our user base ranges from 1 to 10,000. I use it as the main firewall. I use it for High Availability (HA). That's the main use case why we use Sophos XG. We do intend to keep using it.

As a security solution, it's a very good security solution.

Some features are not available on the graphical interface. So you need to return to the command line to solve some issues that are faced by the customer. I used it for enterprise networks, I decided that it is not very good for enterprise networks. There is some issue with its hardware. I have faced two problems and that were resolved by Sophos earlier. They changed the appliance. In other products, I have not seen such problems in the hardware. So I think that the hardware is not heavy duty. You can say it's not heavy duty like other vendors. The performance is not as it says on the datasheet. They should improve the hardware. If they can do that, it would be a very good product.

I am using the appliance from XG 110. We use versions 105 TO 370. I use more than one product for small to medium size businesses. We also use Intercept X firewalls. We deploy Sophos XG on-premise. 

It is scalable for some things. It can have an extendable host. The appliance can be customized for more than one connection point. You can put it in the same fibre and DSL connection.

They have proper support in the technical point of view, and their English language is not clear. You know that they are not native English speakers. That's one of the things that I faced. But they have very good knowledge.

The installation of Sophos is very easy and straightforward. 

It's not very expensive. 

I recommend it for small to medium businesses, not for enterprise businesses. I'll rate it 8 out of 10.

It is very user friendly and easy to manage from the administrative point of view. It is good, reliable, and easy to implement.

It is a very basic and entry-level firewall. It doesn't give very granular control over the traffic. It should have more granular control over the traffic. This feature should be there similar to Palo Alto and Cisco. It should have such advanced features.

I have been using Sophos XG for the last two years. We are using the latest version.

Its stability and reliability are fine.

If you want to have multiple firewall rules, it has this type of scalability. When I compare it with some other products, such as Palo Alto, I can't find similar scalability in Sophos XG. In Palo Alto, we can have rules based on applications or app IDs, and we can create multiple rules for a single ID. We can create a single user or single IP, but such options are not there in Sophos XG. Granular level scalability should be there in Sophos, and they should do better.

I appreciate their support. Their support is good.

I also use Palo Alto. Palo Alto provides application IDs, which is a very powerful feature. Sophos XG is a very normal next-generation firewall with URL filtering, application filtering, and all such features. It is not something extraordinary. It is a very normal next-generation firewall. 

The initial setup is straightforward. It is a single day task to do the initial configuration and move the traffic over there. The firewall hardening, of course, will take some time depending upon the traffic, but the initial setup is a single day task.

It is a normal firewall. All the basic features are there. However, it is not as advanced as some of the other solutions, such as Palo Alto. As we have more security threats, we need more granular control, but these features are not available in Sophos XG.

I would rate Sophos XG a five out of ten.