We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Sophos XGS 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."The solution is easy to configure and maintain remotely."
"The most useful functionality of Fortinet FortiGate is the user interface, multiple engines, and their cloud with the latest integrations. Additionally, the Security Fabric tool is very good."
"The tool is a nice product and easy to handle. The software's user interface is also good. You can easily implement remote access in the solution."
"The most valuable features of the solution are SD-WAN, filtering testing applications, web filtering, and the new VPN."
"The inspection and web security features are most valuable."
"We use a lot of function on the IPS and it works well for us."
"FortiGate has a strong security topic which allows all of the Fortinet devices to communicate and share information which makes their security more powerful."
"I like that you are able to manage FortiGate from the FortiManager to create a more centralized environment."
"The most valuable feature of the Firepower solution is FireSIGHT, which can be easily managed and is user-friendly."
"I love the ASDM (Adaptive Security Device Manager) which is the management suite. It's a GUI and you're able to see everything at a glance without using the command line. There are those who love the CLI, but with ASDM it is easier to see where everything is going and where the problems are."
"This solution has good security, and it's a good product. You can trust Cisco, and there's support as well, which is really good."
"Everything is all documented in the file or in the command line script that gets uploaded to the device. It gives us great visibility."
"The firewall and policy side are easy to use."
"Its security and filtering are most valuable. Every layer of data that comes into the organization goes through it. After setting up the criteria, it automatically filters the traffic. We don't have to check it often."
"The high-availability features, the VPN and the IPSec, are our top three features."
"It provides security for our company and users."
"The solution is easy to use and configure, once you know how to apply the policies."
"Sophos XGS is profound as a firewall and security product."
"Easy to set up firewall product, that's also easy to manage and scale."
"It is scalable."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"Setup was straightforward. One person is enough for deployment."
"The initial setup is very simple."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos is the VPN solution. I also value their threat management, IPS IDS features and login features with single sign-on."
"I would like to see more advanced developments of a wireless controller in the future."
"I feel that the reporting needs to be improved."
"There are just some services that aren't available. For example, the Ethernet or point-to-point protocols. They could add these services to their product offering - especially services for ISPs."
"Currently, without the additional reporting module, we only have access to basic reporting."
"It should have a better pricing plan. It is too expensive. It should also have a more granular view of the attack. I don't have FortiAnalyzer, and it is difficult for me to have a complete view when there is an attack on my server."
"I would like to see improvements with the antivirus and IPS as they are not working properly all the time."
"With the reports, you can see it, and you can get good feelings so upper management can go, "Oh, wow. That looks pretty." However, it's very basic."
"To some degree, it's almost a question as to why some of this stuff isn't simpler. For example, for an AP deployment, while it's integrated, the number of steps that you have to go through in order to get the AP up, seems like a lot."
"I would like to see more configurable feature parity with Cisco ASA, which is the legacy product that Cisco is moving away from. When configuring remote access VPN, not all of the options are there. You have to download another tool, which means that the configuration takes a little bit longer with Cisco Secure Firewall. Though it's getting there, there are still some features lagging behind."
"The price can be better."
"There should be more integration with Microsoft Identity."
"it is not very user-friendly for the administration."
"The product needs real-time logs to be able to monitor our services, so we can know if any our services have been blocked via the firewall or on the application side."
"I was just trying to learn how this product actually operates and one thing that I see from internal processing is it does fire-walling and then sends it to the IPS model and any other model that needs to be performed. For example, content checking or filtering will be done in a field processing manner. That is something that causes delays in the network, from a security perspective. That is something that can be improved upon. Palo Alto already has implemented this as a pilot passed processing. So they put the same stream of data across multiple modules at the same time and see if it is giving a positive result by using an XR function. So, something similar can be done in the Cisco Firepower. Instead of single processing or in a sequential manner, they can do something similar to pile processing. Internal function that is something that they can improve upon."
"The dashboard can be improved."
"In general, they can make it easier to manage the solutions. They can make it easier in terms of administration and provide a single tool for different firewalling solutions. They have different tools to manage different firewalls, such as Firepower or ASA. Sometimes, both are on the same thing. You have ASA with Firepower modules, so you manage some of the things via HTML, and then you manage some of the things via another management tool. It's not seamless."
"The first time a person sets it up, they will need training."
"Sophos configurations are a bit complex."
"Sophos XGS could improve the price."
"We'd like an interface that can monitor everything."
"The VPN capability needs some improvement in Sophos XGS."
"The solution could have a bit more functionality."
"What could be improved in Sophos XGS is its connectivity with Azure AD. It's best if it could work directly without using any servers locally, or in the data center, and this functionality should be made available in this product."
"The application is a little slow; it takes five to ten seconds to respond to every click when configuring. If we need to do significant configuration, it can take a lot of time. This might be because we have a low-end machine, and it could be faster with a high-end one."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Sophos XGS is ranked 17th in Firewalls with 58 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Sophos XGS is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos XGS writes "Easy to use, simple to learn, and offers great reporting". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas Sophos XGS is most compared with Sophos XG, OPNsense, Netgate pfSense, WatchGuard Firebox and SonicWall NSa. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Sophos XGS report.
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