SonicWall NSv (Firewall/Security/VPN/Router) - PAYG

My main use case for SonicWall NSv  is user management and protection.

I use SonicWall NSv  for adding users to our network and ensuring that security.

The best features SonicWall NSv offers are its user-friendliness and ease of access.

SonicWall NSv is user-friendly and easy to access due to how it is generally set up.

SonicWall NSv has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to scale growth without having to constantly reinvent our processes.

SonicWall NSv has helped us scale growth and avoid reinventing processes by providing us with latency visibility, showing us how many people we can add and how we can scale through that capacity.

I do not have anything that comes to mind regarding how SonicWall NSv can be improved.

I have been using SonicWall NSv for probably the last six months to a year, and I have used similar solutions in different companies throughout my career.

SonicWall NSv is stable.

SonicWall NSv's scalability is scalable and very easy.

The customer support for SonicWall NSv is good.

We switched between a couple of products before SonicWall NSv, and I was always more satisfied with SonicWall NSv.

I evaluated other options before choosing SonicWall NSv.

I would advise others looking into using SonicWall NSv to use it as it is helpful and helps businesses do what they need to do while giving them the protection that they need.

I would rate this product a 7 out of 10.

I primarily use SonicWall NSv  to protect cloud servers. I created firewall rules, check traffic, enable IPS, and use it for VPN access.

My main use case was securing the cloud server. I use SonicWall NSv  to control incoming and outgoing traffic and to block threats in the cloud.

In one setup, I had to deploy SonicWall NSv on Azure . I created a virtual machine from a SonicWall image, assigned a network interface, and connected it between the internet and the cloud servers. After deployment, I configured basic firewall rules and NAT. In another setup, I configured SSL VPN  for remote users. I created user accounts, assigned them to the VPN group, and configured the portal. The user connected through the SonicWall NSv VPN client and accessed the cloud server securely.

The best feature SonicWall NSv offers is its simple and clean interface that makes it easy to create rules, check logs, and manage security, even in the cloud. The IDS and IPS features work well and block common attacks, scanning attempts, and malicious traffic before it reaches the cloud servers. SonicWall NSv manages very stable VPN connectivity, as seen in the SSL VPN  example where remote users can connect securely to cloud resources without issues.

There are many features available, including application control features that can detect and control applications in the traffic. This helps block unnecessary or risky applications. Additionally, SonicWall NSv supports NAT and routing very easily, which is important for hosting applications in the cloud. The most valuable aspect is that it is lightweight and flexible compared to other cloud firewalls, and you can scale the VM size up or down based on your needs.

SonicWall NSv has reduced the risk of attack, which is very impactful for any organization, especially larger organizations. With IPS and threat protections enabled, the risk of attack and malware on cloud workloads is reduced significantly. You can have centralized management where you control everything centrally, giving you one place to manage all cloud security rules, VPNs, IPS, and monitoring. This makes management easier for the IT team. Since it is a virtual firewall, you do not need physical hardware, which reduced costs and removed the hardware maintenance effort. It has improved cloud security, reduced attack risk, allowed secure remote access, saved hardware costs, and made management simple for the IT team.

There is minimal room for improvement, perhaps one to two percent. The reporting and analytics should be improved. The reports could be more detailed and easier to customize.

I have been working in my current field as a network security consultant for more than five years.

SonicWall NSv has been stable in our environment. We had no major downtime. From user feedback, it has been rated around eight to nine out of ten for stability.

One challenge was the initial setup. Some options were not very clear in the beginning, so it took some time to configure everything properly. The second challenge was performance. When the traffic increased, we had to upgrade the VM size, otherwise it would slow down. Performance totally depends on the VM size.

Customer support for SonicWall NSv is excellent.

One challenge was the initial setup. Some options were not very clear in the beginning, so it took some time to configure everything properly. The information provided was very knowledgeable and very helpful.

The return on investment was approximately five thousand to eight thousand dollars in savings.

The licensing cost was a bit higher compared to other options, but it is negligible.

SonicWall NSv is very helpful to deploy and manage. Everything can be managed easily and it is very simple, so I cannot justify switching to other options.

My advice is to select the correct VM size. There could be a little bit of improvement regarding the VM size selection to ensure optimal performance. My overall rating for this product is eight out of ten.

I usually use SonicWall NSv  for the primary security perspective, including hybrid and multi-cloud security gateway, micro-segmentation, and east-west traffic control. I also use it to secure SD-WAN and virtualized branches, as well as for regulatory compliance and auditability.

I can give you an example for micro-segmentation and traffic control from my previous company. Imagine you have a standard three-tier web application hosted within a single virtual private cloud in AWS  or Azure . Before SonicWall NSv  segmentation, there is a risk because these three tiers often exist in the same flat virtual network and are separated only by basic security groups. Any successful attack, such as a zero-day exploit, would grant the web tier direct access for the attacker to gain a foothold inside the network because the security groups may only enforce simple port rules, such as allowing the app tier to talk to the database tier on port 1430.

In the solution, SonicWall NSv serves as a network segmentation gateway that can be deployed between these tiers. For example, SonicWall NSv can be deployed as a zoning and policy enforcement gateway with east-west security. By forcing all intra-cloud traffic to east-west to traverse SonicWall NSv, we gain full visibility. We can inspect the encrypted traffic using DPI-SSL between our own servers, and we can check attack containment. If the web tier is compromised, the attacker is immediately blocked by SonicWall NSv IPS signatures, and we maintain regulatory compliance.

Previously, I worked with a company where we had clients from the financial sector. We used a simple illustration about Innova Financial, a medium to large financial service company that is subject to regulations like PCI DSS. They used SonicWall NSv to secure their mission-critical cloud platform in Microsoft Azure .

SonicWall NSv offers great features. I cannot pinpoint a single best feature, but the best feature is the ability to deliver the full, high-efficiency inspection power of a physical SonicWall, including zero-day defense using Real-Time Deep Memory Inspection to the cloud, efficiently removing the performance versus cloud trade-off typically associated with virtual firewalls.

Regarding deep memory inspection and real-time zero-day defense in SonicWall NSv, deep memory inspection is distinct from traditional sandboxing methods because it is focused on what is happening in the memory during file execution time, rather than just observing file system behavior. The deep memory inspection process addresses all challenges by employing a proprietary technique within the secure analysis environment, focusing on CPU-level analysis and real-time verdict. Those are the key points.

SonicWall NSv's user interface is quite clear and easy to navigate. If someone has not worked with SonicWall and this is their first experience with the platform, I would highly recommend it. It is very easy to navigate and very user-friendly.

SonicWall NSv has positively impacted our organization because we gained clear visibility into our network, and it helps to identify potential security issues that we had. We were able to remediate those issues, and so far, we have had a great experience with SonicWall NSv. We were able to manage approximately 99% of network-based attacks through this platform.

From my perspective, SonicWall NSv currently works very well, but I believe it would be better if you could integrate SonicWall NSv UI with AI. Every platform is now integrating with AI, at least in collaboration. If you can add more AI features to SonicWall NSv, such as recommendations, that would be great.

I have been using SonicWall NSv for almost one year when I worked with the previous company.

So far, we have not had any downtime or reliability issues with SonicWall NSv. We are getting great performance from SonicWall NSv. If we have any concerns with our platform, we are always contacting the support team, and the support team is also great. We are getting a response in a very quick time. I am very happy with the current experience.

SonicWall NSv's scalability is highly efficient because it is tied directly to the underlying virtual infrastructure and offers a pay-as-you-grow model. As a cybersecurity professional, I would assess its scalability as excellent for both vertical scaling and horizontal scaling with specific cloud limitations. It has met our organization's needs by allowing us to scale our security posture consistently with our cloud compute growth, increased traffic and user areas, new cloud regions, and policy complexity growth. In the growth area, I performed a vertical upgrade from NSv 470 to NSv 870 license upgrade, and also deployed new active and passive SonicWall NSv pairs instantly using marketplace imaging.

Customer support for SonicWall NSv is super good. If we have any issues or any doubts, they are resolved in a very quick time. That is another good thing that we noticed in SonicWall because other platforms take even days to resolve or reach out, but SonicWall NSv customer support is very good and has met our expectations.

I would rate the customer support of SonicWall NSv a nine.

Before SonicWall NSv, we used other solutions including Cisco Secure Firewall  and FortiGate. The reason we switched to SonicWall NSv was based on our requirements for our infrastructure, policy management, and performance. Comparing with Cisco, SonicWall NSv is very user-friendly and very helpful to manage policies, and it has very good threat efficiency. For example, in threat efficiency, it is highly rated, especially in zero-day threats, Capture  ATP, and Deep Memory Inspection. SonicWall NSv's performance is reliable but can be limited by single-stream CPU usage when DPI-SSL is enabled, but in most cases, it is a great experience. The user interface experience is also superior, which is the reason we made the switch.

The deployment process of SonicWall NSv depends on the metrics that fall into three main categories: security efficiency, operational efficiency, and performance. In security efficiency, it helps with blocking lateral movements, DPI and SSL threat detection, and zero-day block rate. When it comes to operational efficiency metrics, it helped deploy policy time, incident mean time to resolution, and deployment speed. For performance and resiliency metrics, I would mention CPU and memory utilization, latency added, and threat prevention throughput.

After deploying SonicWall NSv, I have seen a return on investment because it helps to save our time a lot. Previously, we had other monitoring methods to monitor network traffic, and it took a very long time. Based on SonicWall NSv, it helped us to easily navigate through everything and get done what we needed in a very quick manner. Additionally, with a low number of employees because it is very easy to navigate and everything is connected, anyone can easily navigate through the platform. It is a very user-friendly platform. If you are trained under SonicWall NSv, you will be able to handle most of the tasks. Therefore, it will definitely help to reduce the time and headcount as well.

We checked other options, including Palo Alto, before choosing SonicWall NSv. We checked the target market, and Palo Alto is for large enterprise compared to SonicWall NSv. The core differentiators are that Palo Alto offers Application-ID visibility. Additionally, deployment speed is a main concern because Palo Alto takes quite some time to deploy, but SonicWall NSv is very fast for existing SonicWall NSv users. That is an interesting difference. As mentioned, threat efficiency and performance were also factors in our decision.

Based on my experience in cybersecurity, the best advice I can offer to others looking into SonicWall NSv is to focus less on the firewall features and more on the architectural planning and the license alignment with your cloud strategy. Some key points would be to master the cloud routing first, then over-allocate the resources for deep inspection, and license smartly, considering BYOL versus PAYG options, and also create a migration plan. Those are the points I have to give for others who are looking to switch to SonicWall NSv. I would rate this review a nine overall.