We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and Sophos XG based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Check Point NGFW is praised for its extensive security features, centralized management, and virtualization capabilities. It is highly regarded in terms of comprehensive protection and adaptability. Sophos XG is known for its usability, user-friendly interface, and straightforward installation process. Both options provide robust threat defense and the ability to expand as needed.
Check Point NGFW, needs to improve various aspects, including integration with other infrastructures, hardware upgrades, cost and pricing, stability and security, UI, complexity issues, redundancy options, and memory management. Sophos XG needs improvements in antivirus features, graphical interface and performance, bandwidth management and VPN capabilities, reporting and user management, support and response time, and specific issues and feature requests.
Service and Support: Some customers have found Check Point NGFW's customer service to be helpful and responsive, while others believe there is room for improvement. Sophos XG's support has received both positive and negative feedback. Some customers have found it to be good and helpful, while others have been dissatisfied with unhelpful and unresponsive support.
Ease of Deployment: The initial setup for Check Point NGFW can range in difficulty, with some users finding it simple while others find it more challenging. Knowledge and experience may be required for certain configurations and migrations. The initial setup for Sophos XG is generally seen as uncomplicated and straightforward, although some users may struggle if they are unfamiliar with the product.
Pricing: Check Point NGFW is known for its high setup cost, particularly when compared to other products. Users find it challenging to add new licensing to existing devices, especially for larger enterprise-level devices. Sophos XG provides flexible pricing options based on the required functionality, offering reasonable and competitive pricing, particularly for educational institutions.
ROI: Check Point NGFW stands out for its cost savings, simplicity, and effective security enforcement. Sophos XG offers a high ROI by reducing support expenses and enhancing security practices.
Comparison Results: Sophos XG is the favored product when compared to Check Point NGFW. Users find the initial setup of Sophos XG to be simple. They appreciate the functionality and user interface of Sophos XG, as well as its extensive protection against threats. The pricing for Sophos XG is considered fair and the technical support is satisfactory.
"We have found it to be very reliable and that's why our teams and various users in our company use it as our main firewall every day."
"It's quite comfortable to handle the FortiGate firewall."
"I'm pretty happy with its reliability. It is also very scalable."
"It is a good source for firewall protection."
"The initial installation is very straightforward."
"Customers are more inclined towards FortiGate because of application control, web filtering, and anti-spam features. The support from the FortiGate team is good, and price-wise, it is affordable."
"Our security improved from being able to put in rules and close off unwanted traffic."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"The failover from one device to the other has been seamless and we find that we do not lose ongoing SIP calls or Teams chats."
"The solution is scalable."
"In addition to the different security features that Check Point security solutions have, their integration with other technologies makes the security environment a complete security type."
"If you want to share traffic loads to both cluster members you can use the active-active feature, if you don't want to share traffic loads you can prefer active standby."
"The IPS is frequently updated so the rules are always new and in place."
"After introducing this NGFW, we have improved our security posture, and now, have peace of mind."
"It has allowed us to grow in a safe way and in accordance with our particular needs."
"We never had an outage of the appliances or the consoles. Stability is very strong. I never had a problem related to stability."
"The interface is user-friendly and the product is easy to configure."
"As a security solution, it's a very good security solution."
"It is feature-rich, I like the server authentication, and the reports are good."
"The cloud-based interface makes it easy to manage."
"The VPN features and its capabilities are great."
"Over the past two years, during the COVID pandemic, the VPN has helped us a lot."
"Great interface and in-built help is very intuitive."
"The firewall feature of Sophos XG has been the most effective for threat prevention."
"I would like some automated custom reporting."
"Sometimes you do need to know some CLI commands, so it's a bit harder for technicians or new people that don't know it."
"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."
"Some configuration elements cannot be easily altered once created."
"Lacks sufficient security options."
"We have an issue with hotel guest vouchers."
"The cloud features and integration could be improved."
"Fortinet currently has many products bundled with FortiGate including the basic firewall and load balancer, and I think that that they need to have separate product portfolios for each of these specialized services."
"There are some GUI features in Check Point's SmartConsole that are still from the old versions and are in separate/duplicated interfaces; it would be most useful if it is integrated and not on different menus."
"Although they have it now, we don't have a license for it, and I think mobile device security should be a standard feature. I cannot control someone bringing their device to my network and what they do."
"They have few predefined reports and it would be nice to increase them since the logs are excellent."
"The main thing for a normal operations guy who is creating tools and firewalls, it is quite difficult to manage. It requires an expert level of knowledge in Check Point products to manage these scalable platform appliances and the virtual firewall that comes with it. We have to educate our guys and give them training on a regular basis to work on these products."
"The naming in the inline layers and ordered layers needs improvement. It makes things very complicated. I've seen quite a lot of people saying that. For audit policies, it is okay since it's very simple to see. However, this area is for very large organizations, which have too many policies, and they need to share all these policies. For small to medium-sized businesses, they don't need it. Even if somebody has 500 rules, if they try to use it, it can be very confusing."
"I would like there to be a way to run packets that capture more easily in the GUI environment. Right now, if we want to read packet captures, we have to do so from the command line."
"Sometimes we need to find a resolution by ourselves as the solution's knowledge base is not enough."
"SmartEvent Settings and Policy GUI, and the rest of external apps should be improved."
"The reporting could be improved in this solution by adding more details."
"Lacks improved throughput performance in a box."
"The first area that needs to be improved is customer support."
"Having a web portal where you could make requests for the categorization of non-categorized items, would be beneficial."
"Sophos XG could improve the policies, they are a bit confusing when creating them. There are many options that make it confusing and it could be simplified."
"We are not very happy with the customer support they provide — it's quite slow."
"Sophos XG could improve by coming out with more innovative feature developments."
"I've had experience with Sophos XG's threat intelligence features, and they provide good coverage, although I wouldn't say they're the best in the industry. The sandbox feature is available with top-tier subscriptions, allowing you to test content in a cloud sandbox. One improvement I'd suggest for Sophos XG is to make certain functionalities, like CR functionality, part of the default firewalling rather than exclusive to premium subscriptions. Enhancing DLP capabilities at the gateway level could significantly boost security for organizations."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 276 reviews while Sophos XG is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 192 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while Sophos XG is rated 8.2. 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 XG writes "Easy to use and deploy with an improved pricing structure in place". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Azure Firewall and OPNsense, whereas Sophos XG is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos XGS, SonicWall TZ and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Check Point NGFW vs. Sophos XG report.
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