Sophos Firewall Console is Easy-to-use
What do you like best about the product?
The best that I have to say about Sophos Firewall is its console and how intuitive and easy to use it is. You don't need to be expert savy or have too much experience on Firewall administration to be able to get comfortable around its menus and the features.
What do you dislike about the product?
What I like the least about Sophos it's the way they structure their email notifications, it's a lot of information and sometimes you might get overwhelmed about the information. Also, the details on those notifications might fall short and not give you enough to proceed.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Sophos bring security into our company's internal network and overall infraestructure
Good centralized administration, Networkperformance leaves something to be desired
What do you like best about the product?
The centralized administration is a great tool to reduce administration overhead. The posibility to connect onPrem-Hardware to this easy is also good. The short delay between updating exeption rules for clients is nice. The Support was swift and good. At one time we enabled and misconfigured the Mailprotection. Your support was able to resolve this issue in no time.
What do you dislike about the product?
For me the option to mix exeption rules for clients is something i wish for. So you can for example add one global exeption for all clients and then specific ones for example servers or special clients. Currently you have to copy everything and then add some. Also we experience a sharp decline in networking performance if we enable the Network Protection feature from Sophos-Endpoint security.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
They provide external access protection as well as a secure connection for our roadwarriors
Extremely safe and convenient
What do you like best about the product?
Safe and fast interface for the end user. Applying specific rules. Customizable rules.
What do you dislike about the product?
There is nothing I don't like.It is a complete price performance product.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It ensures the cyber security of users. It also ensures the cyber security of our company.
Very good product with small limitations
What do you like best about the product?
The simple UI and fast processing make Sophos Firewall a good tool for agile work. Likewise, the configuration options are virtually endless.
What do you dislike about the product?
We had some issues with the waiting time until the components arrived at our place.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The security incidents could not be listed clearly before. Thanks to Sophos Firewall, we were able to monitor and handle them more easily.
Customer satisfaction and ease of operation have been consistently high with this reliable solution
What is our primary use case?
We have deployed the Sophos XG for one of our clients in an SD-WAN scenario where they have one primary link on lease lines and a secondary link on broadband, and they have an on-premise concentrator. It is for specific government reasons they have deployed it at the center, and it's quite satisfactory.
In comparison with other products, Sophos XG is a much more professional company, and you need limited support; most of the things are already available. Whereas with the Indian counterparts, when we used Ray and Infinix, there were some customizations required, as it was not an inbuilt feature, especially in case of reporting and other aspects. The price point at which those products are available makes them viable options because we deploy them according to client requirements. If a client is not ready to invest that much amount, these products are the optimum mix for them.
What is most valuable?
The aspects I appreciate about Sophos XG are the ease of operations and customer satisfaction, though pricing is slightly higher compared to Indian variants.
Regarding threat detection capabilities, if there are any use cases, we definitely would want to use it, and the Sophos XG definitely has those features.
In terms of features for network security, it's of importance, but for this particular reason, the customer was not keen on it because it's a transport of offices. They were not concerned about the transport and security aspects, but even if they were, it would have been reasonably good in Sophos XG. I don't see any challenge on that.
What needs improvement?
The support time needs improvement, as sometimes they ask everything via email and then it takes additional time for them to respond. When asking for something related to reporting or anything, many times their help desk doesn't have a ready reckoner sort of solution, which requires improvement on those timelines.
The initial setup of the Sophos XG is not exactly straightforward.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with the Sophos XG for almost 2 and 1/2 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have not had any performance and/or stability issues with Sophos XG as yet.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I have not encountered any limitations or scalability issues with it yet.
How are customer service and support?
I would rate the technical support an eight on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is the best or the highest.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We have a couple of others for our SD-WAN; Sophos XG we have tried, and we have a couple of Indian manufacturers: one is Ray and the other is Infinix.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup of the Sophos XG is not exactly straightforward.
What other advice do I have?
I would advise users looking into implementing Sophos XG in their environment to consider it as a good product to deploy, though it is slightly costly because Indian buyers are more price-sensitive. I would recommend them to pay a little extra for having peace of mind.
I would rate Sophos XG as a better option compared to all others we have used because peace of mind and faster implementation are the key points which Sophos XG provides compared to these two counterparts.
The initial setup of the Sophos XG is not exactly straightforward, but overall satisfaction is good; I can always say it's a good product to continue with.
On a scale of 1-10, I would rate this solution around 8.5 to 9.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other
Offers intuitive interface but needs licensing improvement
What is our primary use case?
We don't have remote workers, so Sophos XG is only used for our in-house applications and users within the same building. For remote access, we use the Sophos free firewall home edition to connect to the Sophos XG 450, so there was no problem when the license was still activated. We experienced problems currently since the license is no longer activated.
What is most valuable?
The user interface of Sophos XG enhances our administrative tasks because it is intuitive and easy to navigate.
We find the network security, protection, and web features most effective for threat prevention.
Sophos XG has facilitated better traffic management because the model we purchased is only utilizing resources at 40%. We have no bottlenecks, unlike the previous Cyber Room model that we purchased, which was at 85% resource utilization, causing traffic problems. With 40% resource utilization, we don't experience problems with all the features of the base firewall, such as IPS.
What needs improvement?
They could change their licensing model, simplify it, and make it more available to upgrade. We are looking into upgrading or refreshing these firewalls since they will be end of life. We are looking to replace it with another firewall with a five-year license, at least, so that we can survive.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with Sophos XG since 2020.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I am struggling with the licensing model of Sophos XG because we don't have a license. Our licenses expired and we're not supposed to renew the licenses at this time.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We are looking into other brands, including FortiGate because it's closer to Sophos XG. I'm also looking at Sangfor because they say it has better web and network protection. Our objective is to find a solution that is price-wise and affordable for us, with longer coverage and good web application firewall features and network protection for five years license.
I haven't concluded my research on the advantages Sangfor has over Sophos XG yet, but Sangfor has better pricing and states that if the license expires, all the features until the day subscribed prior to termination of the license remain active. This is appealing for us to explore, and we will be asking for a model or POC for that product in the next few weeks. FortiGate comes with an appliance and is somewhat expensive. We're considering Sangfor, Sophos XG, and FortiGate because these are the appliances that we think are affordable for us.
What other advice do I have?
Sophos XG Firewall has improved our network security posture only partially because we don't have the license, so it's just the base license that we are using currently. When we had the license activated, there was no problem, but now that we don't have a license, it reverts back to the base license features only.
We are not so much concerned about the reporting and analytics tools in Sophos XG. I have seen that of Sophos XG 450; it's not comprehensive. I hope Sophos XG 4300 will be better with updated features for reporting because we had problems with minimal reports for the Sophos XG 450. I haven't seen the material white paper on Sophos XG 4300 on the reporting feature yet, but from what I've read, it's still not on par with FortiGate. I don't know about Sangfor yet, so we still have to check on that.
I would still recommend the Sophos XG firewall to others, particularly the Sophos XG 4300, depending on the price. I would also recommend some other vendors when it comes to firewall.
On a scale of 1-10, I rate Sophos XG an 8 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Strong, reliable and powerful devices.
What do you like best about the product?
Easy to setup, not as complex as equivelants. Can work integrated with end-point software. Zero day protection is great. Networking capabilities are great.
What do you dislike about the product?
The disk space for reporting can be upgraded.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use it as e-mail gateway, site-to-site vpn connection, client SSL vpn etc. I can do all these with a single device.
Sophos Security Overall Experience
What do you like best about the product?
It provides strong protection for our devices and network with a dashboard that is easy to use. Managing security policy is straightforward.
What do you dislike about the product?
None. Sophos Security Products help us prevent risk more effectively and save time and resources in the long run.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
From unmanage Infrastructure and Security to Manageable and secured environment with dashboard that is easy to use.
Price, performance, and service - Unbeatable
What do you like best about the product?
At SOPHOS, you get an extremely good complete package of top hardware, very good user-friendliness, and, for me so far, unmatched service.
What do you dislike about the product?
It would have been good if we could have migrated our existing access points to the new firewall. Unfortunately, the new XGS did not offer support for our existing SOPHOS access points. Consequently, all of these had to be renewed.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
During a (firmware) update of the firewall, there is no live status of the current installation visible during the installation phase. It would be nice to see a progress of the process during the installation of the update.
Full satisfaction - Shipping could be optimized
What do you like best about the product?
You can certainly contact support at any time with questions. The inquiries are answered very quickly and competently. The user interface is clearly structured. Our firewalls are used daily with high load and there are no problems here. We were able to install and configure the firewalls independently. Additional useful features were booked by us and are actively used. We are completely satisfied!
What do you dislike about the product?
Unfortunately, the shipping of the hardware took longer than we had expected.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
With Sophos, it is possible for us to respond promptly to emerging issues. We can also scale accordingly with Sophos. The protection and support are very good and comprehensive.
