We performed a comparison between Sophos UTM and WatchGuard Firebox 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."The most important features with FortiGate are the web filter and application controls. We can control our internet usage and use the web filter for application purposes."
"The secure web gateway module and the application control module are valuable. HA operations are very easy."
"It does a lot for you for intrusion protection and as an antivirus. The threat management bundle is worth the money. You don't need another company to monitor your web traffic for you. You can do everything yourself on the firewall. You restrict your own black list for people on the firewall. You don't need to pay some other company for another product to do that for you. The firewall can do that for you. So, it's an easy-to-use product for people to be independent. They don't need to rely on other vendors to do what the firewall can do. They can do everything."
"The pipe filter application is an outstanding feature."
"The CLI and GUI do a good job of putting a lot at your fingertips."
"The product offers very good security."
"The flexibility and ease of configuration are the most valuable features."
"The threat prevention is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"Efficient and effective - it's easy to separate rules."
"Configuration troubleshooting is eased by the use of the color-coded, live firewall log."
"Sophos has a single pane of glass which allows me to manage all my VPCs from a single instance, managing all my firewall from one place."
"Scaling out cannot be easier, as there are many migration paths."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos UTM is the efficiency and mail filtering module."
"It's easy to use."
"I would recommend UTM over XG because it's easier to manage."
"The most valuable feature is ransomware protection."
"[A] valuable feature would be the branch office. We have five offices throughout the United States, and it coordinates the connections of those offices."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use of the interface."
"I like the High Availability features of the newest ones I'm using because they allow a firewall to fail and still be up and running."
"WatchGuard has a very easy VPN and branch office VPN setup, so we use those pretty extensively."
"The most valuable features are the VPN and web blocker security."
"It's very easy to use, especially compared to similar products. A lot more users use the WatchGuard appliance now than use the SonicWall appliance because of the ease of usability."
"The client is easy to use and stable"
"The most valuable features of the WatchGuard Firebox are all the security and updated features. You are able to configure the solution from the cloud platform and the application and web interface are very nice."
"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."
"NGN, reporting and controls."
"Some configuration elements cannot be easily altered once created."
"We had some issues in the beginning while setting it up, but after doing the firmware update, it is working fine."
"There can be more security in hybrid implementations. When a customer has a hybrid environment where some parts are in the cloud, we need a consistent security solution for such scenarios."
"It is stable, but its stability can be improved."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by adding enhancements to FortiMail, FortiSOAR, and FortiDeceptor."
"Pricing for it is a bit high. It could be cheaper."
"We would like to have unique viewable IDs for rules and in the packet filter logfile, for easier debugging of old log files."
"The solution needs to do better at covering mobile devices, although they may have an integrated solution for that purpose."
"The product could be simplified and made more self-explanatory."
"Reporting: We have had to work manually in many of our reports."
"Updates come out agonizingly slowly, a trickle."
"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."
"I would like this solution to support ICAP. Also, they no longer support on-premises management, and are forcing clients to use centralized management via the cloud, which I don't agree with."
"The logs are not clear, which means that you need an additional piece of software in order to read them clearly."
"The way Secure Sign-On authentication is happening needs to be improved. When the Secure Sign-On portal is turned on, anybody who comes into the campus, whether he or she is a staff member or a guest, has to go past the initial portal. One of the shortcomings is the username. It shouldn't allow permutations or combinations with upper or lower cases. For example, when there is a username abc, it shouldn't allow ABC or Abc. It should not allow the same username, but currently, two separate people can go in. Therefore, its authentication or validation should be improved, and the case sensitiveness should be picked up. If I have restricted someone to two devices, they shouldn't be able to use different combinations of the same username and get into the third or fourth device. It shouldn't allow different combinations of alphabets to be used to log in."
"A 12-hour power outage... got our batteries."
"The product's technical support services need improvement."
"What could use some significant improvement in WatchGuard Firebox would be its interface and policy management. An additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of WatchGuard Firebox is the ability to modify an existing policy instead of having to recreate a policy when changes are necessary. At the moment, there's no possibility to modify the policy. You have to delete the policy and recreate it."
"Its documentation could be improved. Sometimes, you need to search a bit longer to find what you are looking for."
"The next release should have better software and configuration systems that can also be used on Linux."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say their web blocker feature. It is still quite a confusing setup, especially when you want to filter out a particular category for granularity. For example, you do not want to filter Facebook but you do want to filter Facebook games only. It can be done, but the process to do it is very confusing."
"We use WatchGuard to manage our failover for internet. If a primary internet goes down, it does a failover to the secondary the internet. However, what it doesn't do so well is that if the primary internet has a lot of latency but it's not completely down, it doesn't do a failover to the backup in a timely manner."
Sophos UTM is ranked 1st in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 110 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 3rd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 78 reviews. Sophos UTM is rated 8.4, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Sophos UTM writes "It's a highly stable platform with very few hardware issues". On the other hand, the top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". Sophos UTM is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and KerioControl, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, SonicWall TZ and Sophos XGS. See our Sophos UTM vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
See our list of best Unified Threat Management (UTM) vendors and best Firewalls vendors.
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