We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and Sophos UTM based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Unified Threat Management (UTM) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."It's very easy to set up, it's very easy to make policies and, for an organization, that means you don't need IT expert in firewalls. You just need to have somebody who knows a little bit of IT, and that's it. With other products, you need someone with a "Masters" degree in firewalls."
"This version is stable. I don't have any issues with this solution, in our environment, it works well."
"Anti-Spam web content filterinG."
"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 is scalable for our users. Right now, we have almost 70 users. We do not have any plan to increase our usage of FortiGate. For maintaining the firewall solution, one staff member is enough."
"The web tutor and automatic rules by schedule are good features."
"The application control features, such as Facebook blocking and Spotify blocking, are the most valuable."
"I have found Fortinet FortiGate to be scalable."
"Everything can be managed from a single dashboard nowadays."
"The support offers the best services I have experienced. It's better than any other IT vendor."
"The tool provides great security."
"Check Point is more expensive but easier to manage, and their presales and after-sale support are way better than Fortinet's."
"The QoS blade is very good for controlling traffic such as Windows patches, mail traffic and other stuff."
"The Smart Dashboard allows for rule creation and administration and management and is user-friendly."
"We have between five and ten firewalls on-premises, and if we want to configure or push the same configuration to all of the firewalls, then the centralized management system is very helpful."
"In R80.10 and above, you can view logs in SmartConsole. You don't have to open another smart tracker to view logs. That is the improvement Check Point has done which makes it better because it is much easier to find logs. This saves time, approximately 40 to 50 a day in one shift."
"The three most important features for us are web protection, web server protection, and network protection."
"The initial setup is easy."
"Has great security features and does a good job of protecting the network."
"UTM 9 brings along IPSec as well as iPhone and iPad support. This seems small but it’s useful."
"Stability-wise, I rate this solution a ten out of ten...Scalability-wise, I rate this solution a ten out of ten."
"This is a very stable product."
"The firewall itself is very strong and provides great security."
"Good basic firewall functions with advanced firewall scanning."
"The reporting in Fortinet FortiGate could improve. Customers are having to purchase additional reporting components. When I have used the Sophos solution it is a complete solution, in Fortinet FortiGate you have to use additional tools to have the features needed."
"FortiGate is really good. We have been using it for quite some time. Initially, when we started off, we had around 70 plus devices of FortiGate, but then Check Point and Palo Alto took over the place. From the product perspective, there are no issues, but from the account perspective, we have had issues. Fortinet's presence in our company is very less. I don't see any Fortinet account managers talking to us, and that presence has diluted in the last two and a half or three years. We have close to 1,500 firewalls. Out of these, 60% of firewalls are from Palo Alto, and a few firewalls are from Check Point. FortiGate firewalls are very less now. It is not because of the product; it is because of the relationship. I don't think they had a good relationship with us, and there was some kind of disconnect for a very long time. The relationship between their accounts team and my leadership team seems to be the reason for phasing out FortiGate."
"WAN load-balancing could be a lot better at detecting when a link is poor or inconsistent, and not just flat out dead."
"While FortiGate is cheaper than most other solutions, we're seeing increased license renewal costs. Most of our clients are asking for more significant discounts because the price is going up."
"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."
"Web security solutions can be improved."
"The support from Fortinet FortiGate could improve. They are not easily accessible when we need them. They could improve their response time."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more capabilities for troubleshooting VPN connections. For example, I do get some feedback about the current status, but I could use some history and logging of important events. The information is logged in our Syslog server, but I could use that information from the device. If they could provide a GUI to have some more insight on what's going with my VPN would be useful."
"There is a strong demand for security services that can be effortlessly integrated which would ensure that security measures can seamlessly adapt to the cloud infrastructure."
"While the solution is good, we wish to have something that is a bit better, as the threats have evolved over time."
"Check Point's study materials should be provided by the company directly and be of very good quality. This is not provided right now and something that the company can improve."
"I would highlight the need for enhancements in technical support services."
"It would be nice if there is a mobile-friendly console for our techs."
"Check Point Smart Dashboard does not support my Apple MacBook Air. It only supports Windows versions."
"The presentation of the reports need to be more user-friendly."
"Check Point is a bit difficult to use and manage so it would be nice to see some improvement in those areas."
"We need a better VPN client for the customers."
"The five-factor authentication needs improvement."
"Last year, Sophos had some major internal management changes that negatively impacted their support."
"I think that additional metrics features are needed to be able to monitor other areas or to monitor as much as you can, at a fine-grain resolution."
"The solution is not scalable."
"Stay away from the wireless models, since you cannot put them in HA. They start to give you some weird issues once you start getting into multiple SSIDs and networks."
"When we call support, we get put on hold for a long time."
"The technical support team’s response time could be improved."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 1st in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 279 reviews while Sophos UTM is ranked 3rd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 110 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while Sophos UTM is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Check Point NGFW writes "Good antivirus protection and URL filtering with very good user identification capabilities". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos UTM writes "It's a highly stable platform with very few hardware issues". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and Azure Firewall, whereas Sophos UTM is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Check Point NGFW vs. Sophos UTM report.
See our list of best Unified Threat Management (UTM) vendors and best Firewalls vendors.
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