We performed a comparison between Palo Alto Networks PA-Series and Sophos XG 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."It's very good and very stable for businesses. It works very well."
"The next-generation firewall is great."
"The GUI is good."
"We purchased Fortinet because of the pricing, its functionality, because it met our requirements, and the total cost of ownership over five years was quite reasonable. In the market, Fortinet is rated quite well."
"The pipe filter application is an outstanding feature."
"The most valuable feature is the VDOM, which allows the customer to have multiple firewalls in a single campus."
"The web tutor and automatic rules by schedule are good features."
"Security management tool that's easy to integrate and easy to work with. No issues found with its stability and scalability."
"It offers a seamless transition from one option to another, making it exceptionally versatile and user-friendly in an enterprise setting."
"The solution provides good customer support."
"I like the tool's security and web filtering features."
"The direct profiles is a valuable feature."
"The product's initial setup process was simple."
"A valuable feature that we can consider is the deployment time, which is significantly reduced, almost 90% faster compared to other solutions. This leads to quicker deployment and less downtime."
"It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The solution is robust."
"The firewall provides network visibility and reporting capabilities, constantly improving over time. It can be integrated with the cloud console, allowing centralized management of multiple firewalls. integration with endpoint security products ensures seamless traffic flow and rule enforcement, even when endpoints are not directly connected to the firewall."
"The VPN is easy and has good logging, monitoring and notifications."
"The product is very easy to explore. It has a very good layout."
"The most valuable feature is web filtering."
"The most valuable features of Sophos XG are user-friendliness and it is highly secure."
"I like the dashboard, the interface, the management console, and the remote login."
"We are able to trace any user and pinpoint any vulnerability or any malicious software. We are able to synchronize between the local and active directories so we can catch users easily through their login names and IDs."
"It is very easy to configure and straightforward. The firewall rules are straightforward. It works great out of the box. It has been working as advertised, and I haven't had any issues with it."
"It is very expensive, and their support is not very good. I hope that their technical support will be better in the future."
"Scalability is one of the disadvantages. When it comes to scalability, you have to actually change the box. If you want to upgrade it, you need to actually change the existing box and probably you take the system off to other sites."
"Technical support needs to be improved."
"They should make the rule sets more understandable for the end user. When you're trying to explain to somebody how a computer network is secured, sometimes it's difficult for an end user or customer to understand. If there was a way to make the terminology more accessible to the end user, the set up could be easier. They should translate the technical jargon to an easily relatable and understandable conversation for the end user, the customer, that would be brilliant. Particularly in an environment where the IT structure is audited regularly, there's always pressure from the auditor to up the standards and up the security and you get your USCERT's that come out and there's a warning about this and the customer will want to lock out so much and when you apply it they run into issue where they can't search the internet or print to their remote office. Of course they can't print to your remote office, they just locked it up. They should make the language more understandable for the customer. If there's a product out there that made the jargon understandable to John Q. Public, I would buy that."
"The debugging and troubleshooting has room for improvement."
"There are some tiny bugs that sometimes affect the operations. In the past revision of it, there was a bug. Because of the bug, we had to downgrade the version. It happened only with the last revision."
"FortiGate support could do some improvements on their IPv6 configuration. Right now it's still in the very early stage for utilizing in an enterprise level network environment."
"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."
"The technical support offered by Palo Alto is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"There seem to be some issues with TAC (Technical Assistance Center) or Palo Alto support. Anytime you open a case, a level one engineer joins, and then you have to escalate it to level two or three. The support system has changed in the past few years, and that's something they need to look into."
"With Palo Alto Networks PA-Series, I find that the support team takes a long time to resolve the issues that a user may face during the use of the product."
"Palo Alto Networks PA-Series should improve its price. It should also include a feature similar to Sophos' Security Heartbeat."
"I encountered a slight issue with the application portal, which was not functioning correctly."
"There are constant updates for the operating system. It is a nice thing also, but it has its own disadvantages. Continuous updates are there. The users face issues like, how often do I need to update that? Within a period of five months, I'm updating it two or three times. It gives them a feeling that they are not confident about their product and have to update it so frequently."
"Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is complicated to configure compared to one of its competitors."
"Currently, they are not protected with any data security when they work from home or outside the network. They surf the Internet directly and should implement a proxy or firewall to monitor the data between the endpoint and the internet."
"The price should be cheaper."
"Sophos XG could improve Data Loss Prevention(DLP)."
"I would like to have more artificial intelligence in the web monitoring service that comes with it. It should alert us when particular events happen. It has already got some of that. I know that it is more of a service, and Sophos is already looking at it. It is called SIEM."
"The support from the vendor needs to be improved."
"When it comes to improvements that the vendor can make, we see that the cloud integration for managing all the firewalls is essentially a replacement of the on-prem version we had and is not sufficiently mature."
"I can't use the product's application control feature, making it a disadvantage of the solution where improvements are required."
"Data traffic analysis could be better. I think Fortinet products like FortiAnalyzer are very effective in analyzing data traffic. I think it's better than Sophos. It could also be more stable."
"The support engineers of the product are not very tech-savvy, making it an area where improvements are required."
Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is ranked 16th in Firewalls with 28 reviews while Sophos XG is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 192 reviews. Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is rated 8.6, while Sophos XG is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks PA-Series writes "Offers trained customer support, stability and ease of use ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos XG writes "Easy to use and deploy with an improved pricing structure in place". Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is most compared with OPNsense, SonicWall NSa, Juniper SRX Series Firewall, Netgate pfSense and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas Sophos XG is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos XGS, SonicWall TZ and Meraki MX. See our Palo Alto Networks PA-Series vs. Sophos XG report.
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