We performed a comparison between Azure Firewall and Sophos XG based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: The main difference between these two products is the scalability. While Azure Firewall users say the scalability could be improved, users of Sophos XG are satisfied with the solution’s capability to scale. Azure users also mention that the interface and the reporting, logging, and monitoring features all need improvement.
"The pricing is great and very reasonable."
"It's a user-friendly firewall. Most of the tasks are very simple. It's simple to configure and troubleshoot this firewall."
"Its user interface is good, and it is always working fine."
"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."
"I like Fortinet FortiGate's antispam filter, SPN, and clustering features."
"The most important feature, normally for small business customers, is link load balancing."
"Reliability is the best feature. We faced some issues when we were setting it up, but the service, portal, and administration are good."
"Whenever I need something, Fortinet improves and updates the software for me."
"Microsoft's technical support is very good. They're quite knowledgable and responsive."
"The firewall policy control, URL content control, and antivirus are all the most valuable aspects. Threat prevention is as well quite good."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is threat intelligence. It is based on filtering and can identify multiple threats."
"We secure the entry point to the virtual data center with the firewall."
"The solution should be capable of self-scaling, which is one of the features we like about it."
"Sophos XG protects our network from advanced threats."
"Sophos XG has cybersecurity. It integrates with the antivirus software."
"The solution is a next generation firewall and we have gotten good customer feedback."
"My clients gain efficiency in protecting against attacks from malware such as ransomware and hacker attacks. It also provides them efficient internet access control, and full visibility of ports, applications, and websites."
"Sophos Control Center is a good feature. We can monitor everything from the control panel."
"Everything is consolidated into a single box, offering comprehensive functionality, including Wi-Fi access and other features."
"Each user has the ability to manage the solution."
"The most valuable feature is that it scans all of the data for any kind of malware."
"Technical support could be better. You don't always get the level of help you need right away."
"The integration with third-party tools may be something that they should work on."
"Technical support needs to be improved."
"Security is a continuous process. In every product, there is a requirement for improvement. Its pricing should also be improved according to Indian market requirements. They must also improve on the reporting part. Its reporting can be more precise. If we can get a real-time report in a specific format, it will be helpful for customers to know about the current status of their security."
"There aren't really any negative aspects to discuss."
"In some cases, its initial setup could be hard for customers."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more storage in the hardware for log data."
"The pricing could be a bit better, especially when you consider how they have the most basic offering priced."
"We find it's different implementing it region-to-region. It might help if it was universal across all regions."
"It needs a lot of improvement, especially on intruder detection. They are working hard on that."
"The reporting, logging, and monitoring features, as well as the flexibility of the policies, need to be improved."
"It is a cloud service, but the lending speed for each region is not always the same. For example, in China, the speed is slow. They need to think about how to make sure that the service pace or speed is always the same in all regions. It would be a great improvement if they can provide the same pace worldwide."
"The interface could be improved, it's not very user friendly."
"They can improve the pricing of Azure Firewall."
"It has fewer features than you can get from other firewalls, like anti-spam and anti-phishing. Those kinds of things are not included. It only includes IDS and IDB."
"Azure Firewall should have a free trial version for new users so that they can evaluate it before deploying it."
"The management console could be improved and the solution lacks good technical support."
"There should be web caching to improve bandwidth utilization. It should have a very good caching feature. That's because we are in a very poor continent, and the connectivity cost is very high. We have low bandwidth, and the intensive usage of bandwidth is not easy here in Africa. If they improve services for web caching, it would be better."
"The weakest point is the technical support because they are difficult to get into contact with."
"There is an area that is very specific to our setup, where working tools you cannot easily establish a VPN between two internal networks."
"Lacking network access control, user profiling and analytics dashboards."
"I need to open the email to see what it contains and the value of it before I know whether to access it or not."
"Having a web portal where you could make requests for the categorization of non-categorized items, would be beneficial."
"Some of the firewall rules are complicated for us to understand, they should be simplified."
Azure Firewall is ranked 21st in Firewalls with 33 reviews while Sophos XG is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 192 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.2, while Sophos XG is rated 8.2. 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 XG writes "Easy to use and deploy with an improved pricing structure in place". Azure Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and Zscaler Cloud Firewall, whereas Sophos XG is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos XGS, SonicWall TZ and Meraki MX. See our Azure Firewall vs. Sophos XG report.
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