We performed a comparison between Check Point CloudGuard Network Security and Sophos UTM 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 initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate was straightforward."
"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."
"User-friendly and affordable security solution that's recommended for SMB customers. This solution has good technical support."
"We use a lot of function on the IPS and it works well for us."
"Offers good security and filtering."
"The threat prevention is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"The IPS is good. It protect my network from attackers."
"The product offers very good security."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its scalability. You will only have to pay less for scaling up. Its notable benefit is deployment complexity. Regional deployment is simpler compared to on-premise setup."
"It is scalable. It's a cloud solution, so it's easy to implement and manage."
"Auto Scaling is one of the features that make me want to choose CloudGuard over actual HW."
"The security configuration features have enhanced the reliable coordination of programs and data safety."
"This software is great in overall performance since it can locate any trouble across the networking system and provide solutions before it affects workflows."
"All the features that we subscribe to from CloudGuard NGTP are valuable. All the threat prevention and access control features give us the network security that we expect."
"The most valuable feature I have found in CloudGuard Network Security is the flexibility to rebuild the firewall as needed."
"The most valuable feature for me is that you have just one license. You can test and implement everything you need with one license. You do not need to pay for separate module licenses when you want IPS or other features."
"The initial configuration is straightforward thanks to the web GUI. In 30 minutes, you can have a running firewall with UTM protection enabled."
"The management suite is easy and the agent is easy to develop."
"The implementation with the AWS environment was good."
"I would recommend UTM over XG because it's easier to manage."
"Installing Sophos UTM is straightforward. The deployment itself doesn't take long, but you have to spend some time planning and waiting for the hardware to be delivered."
"Scaling out cannot be easier, as there are many migration paths."
"If a computer does get infected the Sophos appliance lets us know via it's Advanced Threat Protection so we can get a much faster response time."
"Configuration could not be made any easier."
"The platform's interface could improve."
"The customization could be improved. Cisco, for example, is much better at this. They need to work to be at least as good as they are."
"Fortinet should focus on enhancing the capabilities of FortiGate by consolidating its various products, such as FortiGate Cloud, FortiManager, and FortiAnalyzer."
"Reporting is limited to providing an external appliance for improving the reporting capabilities of the FortiAnalyzer. It does not offer a central management and is also sold separably as an appliance."
"Scalability for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be improved. SD-WAN security for this solution also needs some improvement."
"I think they need to improve more in order to be a competitor with the leaders of the field."
"I feel that the reporting needs to be improved."
"At first glance, the interface for the device is very confusing."
"Check Point CloudGuard Network Security could improve by making it easier to configure."
"Regarding CloudGuard Network Security's integration with various resources like application gateways and application-based security groups, there's room for exploring dynamic access in those areas. A significant concern is the upgrade process. Unlike an in-place upgrade, upgrading the tool in Azure requires deploying a new resource, which can be hectic and less reliable. We have to spend something new to have the tool's latest version."
"Clustering in Azure is a bit different, not using the Check Point cluster but relying on load balancing. It's not as instant as I'm used to; in Azure, it might take around half a minute to a minute, and during this time, services could be down. The delay is attributed to Azure using its load balancing mechanisms instead of the Check Point cluster."
"The convergence time between cluster members is still not perfect. It's far away from what we get in traditional appliances. If a company wants to move mission-critical applications for an environment to the cloud, it somehow has to accept that it could have downtime of up to 40 seconds, until cluster members switch virtual IP addresses between themselves and start accepting the traffic. That is a little bit too high in my opinion. It's not fully Check Point's fault, because it's a hybrid mechanism with AWS. The blame is 50/50."
"Easier optimization techniques can definitely help with better performance of the OS, as using the vanilla software doesn't actually showcase the real capability of the software."
"When upgrading the firewall, the old VPC containing the firewalls needs to be destroyed. After that, a new firewall is redeployed in the setup. Additionally, there's a need to separate the routing, and the routing from the old VPC has to be recreated in the new one."
"CloudGuard Network Security could be improved in the area of upgrading in place."
"From the policy optimization point of view, they can do better. This is not just for CloudGuard. CloudGuard is one little piece managed by Check Point. They can also integrate a third-party policy management solution to improve that. For example, Tufin is focused on policy optimization and management."
"Sophos UTM could improve the way the configuration has to be done. I have to do the configuration through the command line interface but if it could be done through the graphical user interface it would be much better."
"It's stable, but the reaction time of the GUI is terrible."
"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 some features that are available in other brands. For example, I sometimes a person is using too much bandwidth, and it isn't easy to find this information in Sophos. Also, we have to switch connections manually when we are using a VPN and lose the MPLS connection. It isn't automatic."
"We had some problems with the configuration. They had provided a CloudFormation template, and we had to go several rounds to make it work."
"Needs to improve the certificate management (ex. Let's Encrypt support)."
"We would like to have unique viewable IDs for rules and in the packet filter logfile, for easier debugging of old log files."
"Sophos UTM sometimes falls short in high-availability environments. They used to launch firmware that didn't work very well in a high-availability environment."
More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security Pricing and Cost Advice →
Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is ranked 5th in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 121 reviews while Sophos UTM is ranked 1st in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 110 reviews. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is rated 8.6, while Sophos UTM is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security writes "Highly reliable, great visibility, and centralized management". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos UTM writes "It's a highly stable platform with very few hardware issues". Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is most compared with Azure Firewall, VMware NSX, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, Cisco Secure Firewall and Fortinet FortiGate-VM, whereas Sophos UTM is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs. Sophos UTM report.
See our list of best Unified Threat Management (UTM) vendors and best Firewalls vendors.
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