We performed a comparison between SonicWall NSA and Sophos XG based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Sophos XG’s single pane of glass makes it easy for users to manage the entire solution from anywhere. The solution is very light, stable, and provides excellent real-time control. Many users have experienced stability issues with SonicWall NSa. They feel it can be a bit buggy, resulting in occasional freeze-ups and downtime. The solution does not scale easily.
"We can detect any attack of viruses or malware at the first point of contact."
"It is a good source for firewall protection."
"The web filtering facility and application control are the most valuable features from the point of view of our clients. The VPN feature is also quite popular amongst our clients. Two-factor authentication is one of the good features in Fortinet. These features are important for the current scenario of security. Security has become a necessity nowadays. With cyber-attacks becoming more common, protecting an organization's data is one of the major tasks. It is also very stable and scalable, and it is very straightforward to configure. Their technical support is also good."
"We are very happy with the general bandwidth agility we have seen from one website to another website."
"FortiGate's web and URL filtering are unlike any other firewall I've used. The functionality of URL filtering in those solutions is problematic because everything is encrypted, and firewalls can't break that encryption protocol. Fortinet has an SSL proxy, so the encryption is done before the packet ever leaves the FortiGate. The URL filter is definitely one of the most helpful features."
"The scalability is good in Fortinet FortiGate."
"It can expand easily."
"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."
"We have utilized all the features. The most valuable are the URL filtering by category, DMZ zoning, load balancing and site-to-site VPN."
"The most valuable features are that it is reasonably-priced and works well."
"I like the solution's configuration, interfaces, and user guides."
"They offer good antivirus solutions."
"The solution can scale."
"The most valuable features of this solution are intrusion detection, intrusion prevention, and the advanced capture client, which provides live traffic analysis."
"The most valuable feature is the Global Management System."
"Deep packet inspection and intelligent application control are the most valuable features. It is a very updated solution. It is very current as compared to other brands and vendors."
"The filtering is very easy to do. You can segment and create profiles for usage very easily."
"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 web application firewall reverse proxy is very good."
"The security of the solution, thanks to the built-in unified threat management, is one of its most valuable features. Plus, one single pane of glass is all you need to manage the whole solution, and web management can be done from anywhere."
"IPS works smoothly."
"It has a very friendly interface like the Cyberoam iNG units, it has customizable policies, it has proper templates that you can even modify, and you can customize the rules, down to each single user."
"Web publishing is important, as well as the importance of the antivirus patch."
"The solution has good performance and is easy to use."
"Compared to some other products, the DLP is not at par for the moment."
"Web security solutions can be improved."
"Palo Alto has a feature called WildFire Analysis that is unavailable in FortiGate. WildFire is better than a sandbox because it can address zero-day threats and vulnerabilities. It can immediately identify zero-day threats from the cloud."
"With the addition of some features, it is possible that FortiGate can be used in all verticals."
"The solution lacks multi-language support."
"I'm not sure if it's something that they already have or are developing something, however, we need some dedicated features for container security."
"Scalability for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be improved. SD-WAN security for this solution also needs some improvement."
"The solution lacks sufficient filtering."
"The pricing for this product in India is high and the fees should be reduced."
"The implementation for VLANs is a little bit cumbersome. It would be good to make that a little bit easier."
"The product has a lot of bugs, actually. We are facing some issues with this product. The DPI SSL feature which is there, it is not working properly."
"We're not particularly fond of the way it generally performs. We are finding ourselves rebooting often. There are freeze-ups and that kind of thing. The stability needs to improve exponentially."
"You can do zero-trust networking with them, but it's not easy."
"The filter settings are confusing and overly complicated. The user interface can be improved."
"We have used other solutions such as pfSense and Linux native firewalls. I prefer SonicWall NSa but if you are going to use something for an enterprise you need another solution."
"Initially, it may be difficult for some people to learn and become acquainted with it."
"It would be better if they made their own hardware like Palo Alto and Fortinet. They use their own ASICs and claim it is more secure."
"It would be great if the user can have a portal to check on activities related to their account."
"Sophos XG could improve Data Loss Prevention(DLP)."
"It would be helpful if the solution offered some tutorial videos to help new users learn the system quickly."
"The manuals or guides we are given are too simple. When we are implementing the product, it is difficult for us as we don't have more detailed information."
"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."
"There needs to be a way that we can distinguish between educational institutions on Youtube and other Youtube videos. You can do this on Fortinet. Basically, they can block all other Youtube videos besides those that are from educational institutions. With Sophos, you either allow for all Youtube videos or none at all. They need to allow for more specification on different websites."
"The only issue that Sophos XG now needs to improve is the product's reporting capability."
SonicWall NSa is ranked 19th in Firewalls with 80 reviews while Sophos XG is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 192 reviews. SonicWall NSa is rated 7.8, while Sophos XG is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of SonicWall NSa writes "Great performance and security with reasonable pricing". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos XG writes "Easy to use and deploy with an improved pricing structure in place". SonicWall NSa is most compared with SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas Sophos XG is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos XGS, SonicWall TZ and Untangle NG Firewall. See our SonicWall NSa vs. Sophos XG report.
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