Sophos XGS Reviews

I am a cyber professional. I support customers with this solution. Sophos XGS is primarily a firewall. The product allows my customers to manage their internet access for their employees while protecting their environment from things like malware.

The solution requires one administrator as it does not require much maintenance. It depends on the usage and the environment. For example, in some account configurations, the environment has only four or five rules, other times there are over 100 rules. More rules will require more maintenance. 

The most valuable feature of Sophos XGS is the application control. I also enjoy the dashboard and reporting that it provides to my customers. 

Sophos helps my customers manage applications from accessing the internet, not only websites. We can ensure there is limited access to applications like Facebook. For example, Facebook is not accessible, but Facebook Messenger for chatting is. This prevents posting and sharing. We make restrictions without prevention.

Sophos XGS would benefit from further development in the SD-WAN area. It would be great if they could give technical people access to all the WAN links that we are connecting to, including inside the SD-WAN. 

They should make available or round robin inside the SD-WAN. This would allow us to move to another link if one goes down.

I have been using Sophos XGS for six years.

There have been issues with the stability of this product. Sometimes it requires restarting. We have looked into the client environment and this is not causing the instability. The problem is common.

Sophos XGS is not scalable. It is a hardware appliance and we should migrate the settings if we need to. In order for it to scale, you require additional hardware.

Sophos' technical support is responsive. There are times we need to push them to accelerate the process because there is a delay in replying. Sometimes, the first stage of first-line support does not have enough knowledge.

Overall, I would rate their technical support a three out of five.

Neutral

The initial setup of Sophos XGS is straightforward. I would rate it five out of five for ease of setup.

The cost of Sophos XGS is based on per unit, per appliance, and capacity. The capacity depends on the environment. Based on the size, we choose the model. The model selected dictates the pricing.

When comparing the pricing of Sophos to the competition, I give them a five out of five. It is competitively priced.

I have worked with Fortinet and WatchGuard. Other solutions have better performance and security value than Sophos XGS. 

Sophos has most of the features. If they don't have the features one year, they are added the next. At one point they did not have SGON, but now they do. It is not performing like Fortinet or Watch Guard, they need to do some enhancements. 

Sophos has the upper hand on reporting on the firewall itself. For small to medium-sized businesses Sophos is better than the competition.

If the organization is small or medium-sized I would recommend this solution. I would give it a nine out of 10 in this case. If the company is enterprise level, I would rate the solution a five out of 10.

Overall, I rate the Sophos XGS a seven out of 10.

Sophos helps us set public restrictions and add category filtering to secure the network. It provides ATS and IPS scanning for further protection.

I like the Sophos UI. It interface has a more comfortable feel than the competitors.

I recommend Sophos increase the user capacity of the firewall by 1.5 times. For example, say the firewall can accommodate 1,000 users now, then it should handle a load of 1,500 users.

We've been using Sophos XGS for seven years.

Sophos is a stable product.

Sophos XGS is scalable. My company has almost 6,000 users.

We've contacted Sophos support multiple times for help troubleshooting.

We used a Cisco firewall for four years before Sophos. My company has multiple locations, and some had Sophos, but others used Cisco. After we had a good experience with Sophos, we moved the entire company to Sophos.

Installation is pretty straightforward compared to Juniper and Cisco products. The Sophos installation offers better guidance. 

We handled the installation and configuration with our in-house team.

Sophos isn't expensive. It's a mid-range solution that's cheap but not too much cheaper than competitors. It's a good price that meets all our compliance requirements. 

I rate Sophos XGS eight out of 10. 

Basically, we are using these products for our waste filtering, then application filtering and bandwidth management purpose.

The major benefit is that I can shape my bandwidth, basically. In Bangladesh, we do not have a lot of bandwidth management or bandwidth capacity. We have a limited capacity and we share the many people in this capacity. I can shape my bandwidth using this Sophos file, so everyone gets a minimum level of bandwidth. If the user is higher-end, then getting the lower end and the user has the minimum level or less than 1000 or 500, and they're getting better than that.

Sophos has a feature for user credentials, which means if users are not logging into the capital portal of Sophos, they're not using any internet. We can advertise some products and features using these portals for our university. Basically, I am working at a university, so the university's different features and the different departments are using this portal. If students see this advertisement and then after they log in to the credential in the capital portal and use the internet.

Sophos is good for a mid-level company, not a large-level one. If the user level is very large, Sophos is not capable of handling such a high level of users. It, therefore, needs to improve the devices so that they work in larger organizations and with a large number of users.

When we use the hardware level of the device, the RAM or other storage capacity is fixed. We could not change the memory or other capacity of this device. If we need some improvement in capacity, we get different types of problems. If RAM usage is too high or capacity moves higher, the Sophos device does not work properly.

Sophos has a number of additional features, however, the user graphical interface, the graphical interface when we are using CyberRoam, the user portal, or user interfaces, are so much smarter than Sophos. In Sophos, the user portal is not user-friendly. This needs to change, the UI.

I've worked with the solution for the last four years. 

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze. I'd rate the performance at 75%. Some improvements could be made. 

We have 4,000 or 5,000 people that are connected in Sophos.

It is not easily scalable as it has fixed capabilities and that means C2 RAM is fixed. That makes it not easily scalable.

We use the product on a daily basis. 

Sophos' technical support is not good. I have not been getting better support from their technical people. The response time needs to be better.

I am also using the Cisco Firepower model 4110.

The main difference is basically Sophos is not like a Firepower. Sophos we can call by the UTM device management. For security purposes, we are using a Cisco firewall for different types of attacks. For bandwidth management with filtering and other activities, just normal activities, we are using Sophos.

The initial deployment is not complex, however, it's mid-level. You do need some experience. It depends on the device model. If we purchase the higher model, then the price or other investment is also more.

The deployment takes a maximum of one month. We do maintenance on the devices maybe once a year. 

For the deployment process, the partner helped us deploy the devices and three people were working on the deployment.

The initial price is high and we purchased a three-year licensing model. Every three years, after every three years, we need to renew Sophos. Everything is included under the license. 

The pricing is quite low, and we are quite happy with it.

We're a customer and end-user.

We are using the hardware version of the product. It's the latest version. 

I'd rate the solution a seven out of ten.

We use Sophos XGS in 15 locations with 15 firewalls for the XG. We dedicate one person to maintain the solution.

The most valuable feature of Sophos is the VPN solution. I also value their threat management, IPS, IDS, and login features with single sign-on.

Sophos XGS needs improvement with the threshold values. Other solutions have the capacity to handle more users.

I would like to see virtualization security included in the next release.

We have been using Sophos XGS for more than two years.

Sophos XGS is stable as long as the capacity is not exceeded, then it becomes slow.

Scalability needs to be improved by increasing the threshold value. The bulk capacity can handle 300 users, if you have more users, it does not work well.

Technical support is okay. They are responsive but limited with knowledge and need to escalate to the upper levels. It takes time to resolve issues.

Positive

The initial setup of the solution was straightforward. It is easy to use and convenient.

The license for Sophos XGS is for three years, paid on a yearly basis. Everything is included with the license; there are no additional fees.

Sophos SGS is a nice solution. I would rate this solution an 8 out of 10.

We use Sophos XGS for web security and web policies, it's our primary solution. authentication VPN site to site, SSL VPNs installations. Sophos Firewall designed its extreme protection IT Rules and policies security level Authentication is good sometimes it's tricky and very helpful. Sophos Firewall delivers advanced threat protection to instantly identify bots and other advanced threats while defending your network from today's sophisticated attacks. current live user activities diagnostics to generate logs and objectionable site restrictions, daily reports are a great solution for the work environment.

With the increase in cybersecurity threats, this solution has helped us at an organizational level. We have always been hit by someone at the end of our desk or hidden somewhere ex:- spoofing attacks, a man in the middle attacks, and ransomware new era of cybersecurity pain full concept, Mail spoof attacks, all these have to improve DMZ and secure the firewall policies and server-client Antivirus solutions. Daily monitoring manually or trusted third-party vendors monitoring tools. finally, we are worried about how strong we are at the cybersecurity level.

This is a great solution for security, authentication, hashing, and encryption level. Sophos is good at ACL rules, Port forwarding, SDWAN route policies, IT Rules and policies as well as Natting rules. It's a reliable product to secure web securities. whenever we want we switch to the ports securely Heartbeat monitoring live user activities is great to execute on a production level. Bandwidth control sometimes referred to as traffic shaping is one of the best firewall features. Link aggregation and SD-WAN (Software-defined Wide Area Network) are great features for businesses that need multiple links to the internet. thank you

There are occasional issues when we update an operating firmware there's some lag time. Updating requires us to reboot the firewall, in this scenario 24/7 organization will be the most effective. In addition, I'd like to see more focus on customer support calls we were waiting for hours to connect with them. In some cases, Sophos's team is extraordinarily helpful to solve any issues in the firewall. Sophos needs to focus on customer support through a chatbot or call management quickly so we can find some help on the client side. Thank you

I've been using this solution for five years. 

The solution is stable despite having to restart when we update. 

The solution is very scalable and we're able to handle all the pressure in our organization. We have over 100 VPNs and it all works well, Authentications, port forwarding, and all kind of security levels are much appreciated. 

Customer support needs to be improved. They're very helpful once you get them on the line but sometimes take up to an hour before we can speak to someone who can fix a problem. when a problem occurs at the production level we freeze and everything goes blank so a faster customer support call is much more appreciated.

Positive

The initial setup is complex. Sophos has some features like rules and policies, NATing, and PATing so deployment might take more time than if we were using an alternate solution. Deployment can take up to two weeks because every policy and VPN requires checking and that takes time. I've been working for the past 10+ years experience in network engineering and firewall configuration so we deployed in-house but we contacted Sophos for assistance when we needed it.

The Sophos or any kind of firewall is worthy to buy when we have dedicated servers and switches to implementation.

There are some very good features in this firewall and also some areas that need improving. I rate this product seven out of 10. 

I use Sophos XGS as an alternative gateway and we are using all the new generation firewall functionalities, such as EPS and antivirus.

We are using the WAF functionalities of Sophos XGS which has helped the organization.

Sophos XGS could improve by having a Network Access Control(NAC). This feature is a basic function in other firewalls and should be added, such as Palo Alto.

The SD-WAN functionality should be reviewed because there are some devices that don't work well. For example, in Palo Alto, the SD-WAN functionality is more efficient.

I have been using Sophos XGS for approximately four years.

Sophos XGS is a stable solution.

The technical support from Sophos XGS is good. We reach out to them if there is a serious problem. We have opened approximately four tickets with them.

I rate the support for Sophos XGS a two out of five.

I have used many other solutions, such as Palo Alto, Fortinet, and Cisco. Sophos XGS rates are at the bottom of the list compared to many solutions.

The initial setup is straightforward.

I would rate the initial setup of Sophos XGS three out of five.

We have a team of three or four people who administer Sophos XGS.

Once you pay for the Sophos XGS hardware there is no license required. There are additional costs if you want the support. We have purchased support for three years.

I rate Sophos XGS a six out of ten.

We use the solution as an antivirus gateway and internet gateway.

All the features are effective in enhancing our network security. I am satisfied with the product. The threat intelligence capabilities of the tool are good. It has contributed to reducing our overall security costs by approximately 90%.

I do not get notifications regarding ISP downtime. It would be better if I could get notifications related to the critical errors occurring in Sophos. The product is difficult to use. The administrators must be notified of the errors occurring in the firewall through emails or messages. It will help organizations take proactive measures instead of taking action after the incident happens.

I have been using the solution for one and a half years.

The customer support is weak. The support team is not responsive. The support people do not follow up or call us back.

Negative

The implementation is not difficult. The service providers help install and implement the firewall in our network.

I will recommend the product to others. However, I would not recommend it to organizations that do not have technical people who deal with networks. Overall, I rate the product a seven out of ten.

The best use case of Sophos XGS is for customers who use CMGs that manage the gateway of Microsoft, which was made obsolete years ago. Clients want to replace their proxy with some solution, and Sophos is one of the best bets.

The solution is good for web filtering. It's also possible to use it as a load balancer and a destination firewall and site-to-site channeling. Remote users can gain access via Sophos. It solves for a variety of uses that the client needs. 

In our market, they offer a web filter SSL VPN and they are very useful for the customer.

The initial setup is very simple. 

It's stable and reliable. 

We can scale the product.

Some firewall names like Palo Alto and FortiGate are very famous for security. People find them very secure. While Sophos is fairly secure, they aren't known for their security, and it's not an obvious selling point. Unfortunately, on Gartner, Magic Quadrant, and Forrester, Sophos doesn't have a good presence. They need to get better at marketing their abilities and expanding what they can do.

I would like to see them in third-party evaluation reports like Gartner, Magic Quadrant, or Forrester to make it easier for us to show our customers that Sophos is a leader in the market. It will be easier for us to sell them. Our market depends on what products are currently in Gartner and Forrester, and these platforms. 

We've been working with the solution for five to six years. 

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The product is scalable. 

We have more than 100 clients on Sophos. 

Technical support is good and above average. 

Neutral

It is easy to set up the solution. It's not a complex process. 

While it depends on the magnitude of the customer's environment, normally the deployment only takes a day or two.

We do not require any outside assistance. We can handle the setup ourselves. 

If the client needs us to, we can deploy the solution for them. Since we sell the solution, we have a good understanding of the process. We have been doing implementations for years. 

The pricing is moderate. It's not overly expensive. They offer good licensing. 

We are using and selling the solution. We are deploying it for different customers.

When the customer wants to buy an appliance, definitely it's an on-prem solution. However, when it comes to an endpoint or a firewall as a service, they offer cloud solutions as well.

I'd recommend the solution to others. 

I would rate the solution seven out of ten.