We performed a comparison between Palo Alto Networks VM-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."The payment function for applications is good."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are it is one of the most mature firewalls in the UTM bundle."
"Fortinet FortiGate has many valuable features, such as IDS, and intrusion detection. It has security features that are in part with the technologies that are available in the market."
"The simplicity of the configuration and the stability of the product are most valuable. The VPN concentrator is very useful."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ease of use and there are several operating systems that can include the hardware capacities. In the newer releases, the resources were more useful because they were included in the operating system."
"Fortinet FortiGate is stable. It's used across all the countries, this is the way most multinationals run their system."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the different types of profiling. It has been the most effective for me. The WAF and the antivirus profile are the most effective in network protection."
"The most valuable feature is the interface, which is very user friendly. We are utilizing most of the features, like content filtering. The firewall is powerful."
"It ensures that every interaction, pre and post-loan processing, undergoes a thorough inspection, leveraging VPN features and comprehensive security protocols."
"The filtering feature is good."
"What I like about the VM-Series is that you can launch them in a very short time."
"Palo Alto’s Panorama centralized management system simplifies our security posture based on our requirements. Instead of manually pulling logs, then generating them into readable formats, it gives us the console in a readable format to view."
"It has a good performance which helps you with the stability of your virtual environment."
"It scales linearly with load and no issues."
"The product provides more visibility into our traffic."
"It is reliable and the support is very good."
"It is very user friendly and easy to manage from the administrative point of view. It is good, reliable, and easy to implement."
"I recommend the solution due to its ease of use and pricing."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos XG is the VBM."
"The most valuable feature I have found to be the reporting function."
"Sophos began with a basic version and evolved into something more efficient in terms of performance."
"Sophos CG is cost-effective, which makes it really suitable for SMB. If you want basic security and more embedded features, go with Sophos XG."
"Technical support is responsive."
"It is a very stable solution."
"Its customer service could be better."
"The stability could be a bit better."
"The support costs and licensing are sometimes so expensive."
"I think they need to improve more in order to be a competitor with the leaders of the field."
"In the balance between links feature normally you can just choose one option to balance. It would be better for the solution to have more than one option, preferably three."
"It claims it does DLP, but the degree and level of controls are very basic."
"FortiOS is not simple."
"Difficult to add or define, and not that easy to configure and manage."
"The disadvantage with Palo Alto is that they don't have a cloud-based solution that includes a secure web gateway."
"It would be good if the common features work consistently in physical and virtual environments. There was an integration issue in the virtual deployment where it didn't report the interface counters, and we had to upgrade to the latest version, whereas the same thing has been working in the physical deployment for ages now. It seems that it was because of Azure. We were using VMware before, and we didn't have any such issues. We do see such small issues where we expect things to work, but they don't because of some incompatibilities. There also seems to be a limitation on how to do high availability in a virtualized environment. All features should be consistently available in physical and virtual environments. It is not always easy to integrate Palo Alto in the network management system. We would like to be able to compare two network management systems. They can maybe allow monitoring an interface through the GUI to create a reference or do a baseline check about whether your network monitoring system is actually giving you the correct traffic figures. You need traffic figures to be able to recognize the trends and plan the capacity."
"In the next release, I would like to see better integration of multi-factor authentication vendors."
"Palo Alto is that it is really bad when it comes to technical support."
"There's room for improvement in terms of integration with the load balancer. It isn't like Fortinet, which has a load balancer built into its firewall. It is effortless to integrate within the load balancer-plus-firewall solution."
"They made only a halfhearted attempt to put in DLP (Data Loss Prevention)."
"The product could provide protection above Layer 3, which gets into the application layer and provides better visibility into those aspects of application security."
"The one issue that I didn't like is that the SNMP integration with interfaces didn't record the interface counters."
"There could be some room for improvement in its pricing since my clients usually feel like the product is on the expensive side."
"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."
"I used to work with Fortinet, and sometimes I see that the SD-WAN feature could be better because it's much easier in Fortinet."
"Sometimes when you roll out a new firmware, you find that the rules you already have in place are broken, so it's difficult to migrate to a new firmware. That's the only downside I've experienced in Sophos."
"I'm just a sole proprietor for IT support, and from my perspective, there could be better ways to educate a proprietor, such as myself, on how to set it up, and program it, and manage it. They do tend to have support, but a lot of times, it is for larger networks. I need something that is simpler and more rudimentary as to how to go about setting up and configuring the firewall, setting up the rules, and that type of thing. So, if there is a missing component there, that would be it."
"The response time could stand improvement."
"Let's say I set up a rule to block users from accessing YouTube or Facebook. The rule will only block the HTTP traffic, which is non-secure traffic... The problem comes when you are trying to block, or allow, similar traffic that uses HTTPS. You have to create a certificate and import it into the users' web browsers, whatever they are using... The problem occurs when you're dealing with roaming users who use laptops and have to move between different sites that have different types of policies applied to them. You have to import all sorts of certificates from each site into their browser. Doing so will most probably conflict with something else that is totally irrelevant and cause a problem."
"The first area that needs to be improved is customer support."
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is ranked 10th in Firewalls with 53 reviews while Sophos XG is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 192 reviews. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is rated 8.6, while Sophos XG is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series writes "Many features are optimized for troubleshooting real-time scenarios, saving a lot of time". 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 VM-Series is most compared with Azure Firewall, Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Juniper SRX Series Firewall, whereas Sophos XG is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos XGS, SonicWall TZ and Meraki MX. See our Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs. Sophos XG report.
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