We performed a comparison between Azure Firewall and Sophos UTM based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."This solution made it very easy to manage our bandwidth."
"With FortiClient, you can easily connect when you are home, check out what you want to do, and connect to your network when you are not at work. You can switch on servers and you can check what is wrong."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is load balancing. It can provide central management and VPNA. Additionally, it has enhanced our security environment."
"Fortinet FortiGate's most valuable features are ease of use, flexibility, and most of the configuration we can be done using the GUI. When we compare Fortinet FortiGate with other solutions the firewall policy are very easy to understand."
"The simplicity of the product is great. It's very easy to use, which is a compliment we get all the time in terms of feedback."
"It's an easy solution to set up."
"The most valuable feature is the VDOM, which allows the customer to have multiple firewalls in a single campus."
"The pricing is excellent. It's much less expensive than Cisco."
"All its features are good. That's why we recommend it."
"I like its order management feature. It doesn't have the kind of threat intelligence that Palo Alto has, but the order management makes it much simpler to know the difference."
"Azure Firewall's feature that I have found most valuable is its scalability."
"Network filtering is valuable. The scalability capability from the cloud-native service helps us a lot because it simplifies our day-to-day maintenance activity."
"The initial setup is straightforward; Azure Firewall does not have a complex implementation process. It is very simple; you just need to enable the service within Azure. It does not require any maintenance because it is managed by Microsoft, that is, it is a fully managed service."
"Great security and connectivity."
"The SIEM that Azure Firewall provides us is very robust."
"I think that one of the best features is definitely the premium version, along with the IDPs in terms of the intrusion detection and prevention system."
"It helped to connect our satellite offices to the main Amazon infrastructure in a circular way."
"We've found the technical support to be helpful."
"Sophos UTM has improved the porting section. It has improved security by seeing the gaps. For example, when you discover that an entry has been using a certain application, with Sophos UTM acting as a Layer 7 firewall, you can block the application, not the port."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos UTM is reporting, it is flexible. I can monitor the end user's devices, even when they are not on my network. It has good drill-down capabilities."
"The packet filtering's great. You get out what you put into it. It works great as long as you know your security and configure everything adequately. If you just pop one in and it's not configured, then it's basically wide open. It kind of depends on the admin skill, but it's an excellent product."
"Sophos integrates seamlessly, and we don't even feel it is running in the background."
"It makes it a lot easier for us to maintain things. Prior to it, things were more difficult. This means less time on us. We can focus on other things. The recovery is more in man-hours for us than anything else."
"The solution can scale."
"Fortinet FortiGate can improve by integrating the web application firewall and the DDoS protection part of the solution. Having a WAF feature, web application firewall, and proxy together would be a good benefit."
"There could be more integration between the logging and analytical platforms to make it more seamless and integrated."
"The product does need better support in the cloud environment. It's not exactly cloud-native right now."
"There is room for improvement related to the logging and reporting aspect."
"If they could extend their fabric towards other vendor environments for integration, that would be great."
"The firewall engine is not so strong as of now, in my opinion... My second concern is that, while they have Zero-day vulnerability and anti-malware features, the threat engine needs to be strengthened, its efficiency can be increased."
"The UI could be improved."
"Improvement is needed in the Web Filter quotas to restrict users with allocated quotas."
"Right now, with Azure Firewall, we cannot have a normal inbound traffic flow. For inbound, Microsoft suggests using application gateways, so the options are very limited. I cannot use this firewall as an intermediate firewall because of the limitations, and I cannot point routing to another firewall. So if I want to use back-to-back firewall architecture in my environment, I cannot use Azure Firewall for that type of configuration either."
"The development area and QA area could be improved. With those improvements, we can improve projects and take even less time to implement them."
"It's a little heavy compared to a FortiGate or other firewalls."
"They can improve the pricing of Azure Firewall."
"It needs a lot of improvement, especially on intruder detection. They are working hard on that."
"There is room for further integration of AI into the system."
"The solution doesn't offer the same capabilities of Fortinet. It should offer intrusion prevention and advance filtering. These are two very useful features offered on Fortinet that Azure lacks."
"For large organizations, a third-party firewall would be an added advantage, because it would have more advanced features, things that are not in Azure Firewall."
"Sophos UTM could be simplified, and they can improve on the many other features, like SD-WAN and load balancing. Sophos UTM is missing a few features that their competitors have. For example, if you have multiple branches you would like to connect, the load balancing features aren't available on multilink. If we create a VPM for multiple LAN links, we cannot load balance the traffic."
"The solution could be improved by adding cloud soundboxing."
"The pricing is an issue."
"Sophos customer support could use some improvement."
"Flexibility in pricing could be improved. It's more rigid in its pricing compared to its competitor: Kaspersky."
"The reporting could improve by providing information on where, or from which device attacks are coming from. We are already given the country where the attack is coming from but more information would be beneficial."
"During initial configuration, I encountered a few issues."
"I didn't like it much. It suits only small businesses. It isn't scalable and reliable. There is a very critical issue with the power supply."
Azure Firewall is ranked 22nd in Firewalls with 33 reviews while Sophos UTM is ranked 3rd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 110 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.2, while Sophos UTM is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Azure Firewall writes "Easy to use and configure but could be more robust". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos UTM writes "It's a highly stable platform with very few hardware issues". Azure Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and Check Point NGFW, whereas Sophos UTM is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Azure Firewall vs. Sophos UTM report.
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