We performed a comparison between Palo Alto Networks VM-Series 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."It has improved our organization with control data."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the analytics."
"Fortinet has a very good solution for Secure SD-WAN. One very good feature is that they have robust and simple FortiOS through which they provide all solutions. That's their strength. There's not much complexity involved with the Secure SD-WAN solution of Fortinet as compared to Cisco's solution, which has a lot of flexibility but complexity also comes with that flexibility."
"There are lots of features and most of them are deployed for internet security. Users are protected if they accidentally go to some malicious sites."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is load balancing. It can provide central management and VPNA. Additionally, it has enhanced our security environment."
"I appreciate FortiGate's flexibility, which allows for centralized management through FortiManager."
"The ease of setting the solution up is a valuable aspect for us."
"The response is very quick and they can visually resolve our problems in a short period."
"The most valuable features are web control and IPS/IDS."
"Using Palo Alto Networks Panorama, we were able to deploy a single point of management and visualization of the firewall infrastructure in cloud, on-premise and integrated with Azure to automate scale up. Its security features, i.e. anti-malware, threat prevention, URL Filtering, VPN, and antivirus are the most valuable. The ID-User integrated with AD and 2FA features are also very useful to provide secure access to servers and some users in the company. "
"The technical support for the solution is very good."
"Palo Alto’s Panorama centralized management system simplifies our security posture based on our requirements. Instead of manually pulling logs, then generating them into readable formats, it gives us the console in a readable format to view."
"It scales linearly with load and no issues."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"The most effective features for threat prevention are application-based prevention and WildFire. These features cover various threats, such as ransomware, malware, etc. They provide real-time visibility. By applying appropriate policies, threats can be blocked."
"In the newer version, there are 3850s, all of them are scalable. They fit better into the medium or small businesses."
"The solution can scale."
"What I like about the solution is the ease of use."
"Sophos UTM has a good user interface and granular security controls."
"It has made our organization more secure, because we are using a VPN. We are not accessing services directly. It allows us to segregate some of the traffic for individuals which may be more of a developer role rather than an operational role needing access to developer resources, but not necessarily production operational resources."
"Advanced protection (Sophos Sandstorm) - Protects against crypto viruses in real-time."
"It helped to connect our satellite offices to the main Amazon infrastructure in a circular way."
"What I like about Sophos UTM is that it improves my company's security. The solution is easy to set up, which I like, and it's very stable."
"The management suite is easy and the agent is easy to develop."
"Cisco Meraki products are rising very quickly in the cloud and the connected era. Meraki products offer much better ROI, upgradability, and manageability."
"For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial."
"Some features of Fortinet FortiGate are actually fee enabled that are inconvenient for deploying in production. Other issues relate to isolation with Cisco products and your server."
"Application management can be improved."
"In some cases, its initial setup could be hard for customers."
"The solution could be more evenly structured."
"Its reporting capabilities can be improved. It should have some out-of-the-box reporting capabilities and some degree of customization. The basic reporting that it currently has is not sufficient to create more usable reports. It needs some sort of out-of-the-box reporting. They try to make customers purchase FortiAnalyzer for this kind of reporting, which is an additional cost. Other firewall vendors, such as SonicWall and Sophos, provide this sort of reporting without any additional cost."
"Fortinet should focus on enhancing the capabilities of FortiGate by consolidating its various products, such as FortiGate Cloud, FortiManager, and FortiAnalyzer."
"The command-line interface is something that some people struggle with and I think that they should have an option to go straight to the GUI."
"It'll help if Palo Alto Networks provided better documentation."
"The web interface is very slow, and it needs to be faster."
"The tool is very costly."
"The only minor issue we've faced is with the app's ID configuration, which requires specific matching for application filtering."
"We have ran into issues with Palo Alto’s limitations for resolving large IP lists from DNS lookups, as well as the antivirus interfering with App-ID."
"There is no proper support channel to follow up on cases."
"There's room for improvement in terms of integration with the load balancer. It isn't like Fortinet, which has a load balancer built into its firewall. It is effortless to integrate within the load balancer-plus-firewall solution."
"Sophos UTM's internet security could be better."
"Updates come out agonizingly slowly, a trickle."
"During initial configuration, I encountered a few issues."
"Last year, Sophos had some major internal management changes that negatively impacted their support."
"Monitoring and reporting are areas that need improvement."
"The lack of import/export functions for network and service options drives me mad."
"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."
"The logs are not clear, which means that you need an additional piece of software in order to read them clearly."
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is ranked 10th in Firewalls with 53 reviews while Sophos UTM is ranked 1st in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 110 reviews. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is rated 8.6, while Sophos UTM is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series writes "Many features are optimized for troubleshooting real-time scenarios, saving a lot of time". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos UTM writes "It's a highly stable platform with very few hardware issues". Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is most compared with Azure Firewall, Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Check Point NGFW, whereas Sophos UTM is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. See our Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs. Sophos UTM report.
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