We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Sophos XG based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: The two solutions are very comparable. The only major difference between the two is that some users of Cisco Secure Firewall consider the deployment to be somewhat complex.
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution."
"The pricing is excellent. It's much less expensive than Cisco."
"I think that the UTM features are the most value, as it truly protects my infrastructure."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is load balancing. It can provide central management and VPNA. Additionally, it has enhanced our security environment."
"There is an easy process for configuring it, and it is straightforward to implement the device from scratch."
"The solution is stable."
"The solution is very user friendly. The user interface in particular is quite nice."
"The simplicity of the product is great. It's very easy to use, which is a compliment we get all the time in terms of feedback."
"The best features are stability and scalability."
"I like the Cisco ASDM (Adaptive Security Device Manager), which is the configuration interface for the Cisco firewall."
"It is a secure product."
"If only a Layer 4 FW is needed, this is a good solution."
"You do not have to do everything through a command line which makes it a lot easier to apply rules."
"The user interface, the UI, is excellent on the solution."
"I found that setting up rules for HTTPS and SSH access to the management interface are straightforward, including setting the cypher type."
"VPN and firewall are good features."
"I have found the solution easy to use and fully integrated."
"The VPN features and its capabilities are great."
"The firewall feature of Sophos XG has been the most effective for threat prevention."
"I like the fact that it can self remove malware and do updates on the cloud via Sophos Central."
"The antivirus features are valuable."
"The product is very easy to explore. It has a very good layout."
"The user interface is very good."
"The initial setup is very straightforward and the solution is extremely user-friendly."
"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."
"Fortinet needs to overhaul its documentation."
"If they could extend their fabric towards other vendor environments for integration, that would be great."
"They need to improve their technical support."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more capabilities for troubleshooting VPN connections. For example, I do get some feedback about the current status, but I could use some history and logging of important events. The information is logged in our Syslog server, but I could use that information from the device. If they could provide a GUI to have some more insight on what's going with my VPN would be useful."
"Some of the features in the graphical user interface do not work, which requires that we used the command-line-interface."
"We'd like more management across other integrations."
"Usually, we sell the bundle with the UTM or threat management piece with IPS, IDS. Other providers, such as Palo Alto, are ahead in terms of safe functionality. So, for me, delivering truly safe service is probably something that still needs to be improved."
"We wanted to integrate Firepower with our solution, but it didn't have the capability to accommodate our bandwidth since they only had two 10 gig interfaces on the box. We run way more than that through our network because we are a service provider, providing Internet to our customers."
"The interface for monitoring could be improved to allow better views to make troubleshooting easier."
"While this applies to all vendors, pricing can be always lower. In my opinion, Cisco is the most expensive. The pricing can be reduced."
"I would like it to be easier to work with and have a better user interface. It is not straightforward. You need to know the Cisco command-line interface."
"One of the problems that we have had is the solution requires Java to work. This has caused some problems with the application visibility and control. When the Java works, it is good, but Java wasn't a good choice. I don't like the Java implementation. It can be difficult to work with sometimes."
"The ASA has become a bit old and needs updating."
"Its interface is sometimes is a little bit slow, and it can be improved. When you need to put your appliance in failover mode, it is a little difficult to do it remotely because you need to turn off the appliance in Cisco mode. In terms of new features, it would be good to have AnyConnect VPN with Firepower. I am not sure if it is available at the moment."
"The GUI interface could be improved when compared to other solutions."
"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."
"Sophos needs improvements made to the console, such as host entry or defining rules directly from it."
"Sophos can improve the debugging of the WAPS function."
"The GUI and support could be better. I think there are other products that we are going to deploy instead of Sophos. We have already upgraded a month ago because the interfaces and support for Sophos are really weak. But other products like Juniper, Cisco, or FortiGate are better than Sophos. It's also complicated, and the end-user or client does not understand it."
"Fortinet surpasses Sophos in terms of support, particularly with its comprehensive five-one feature console."
"The VPN device could be improved upon."
"It's easy to use, but it's hard to configure exact settings. They need to make it easier to access advanced features."
"Its price should be improved. It should be cheaper."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Sophos XG is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 192 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Sophos XG is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos XG writes "Easy to use and deploy with an improved pricing structure in place". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, 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 SonicWall NSa. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Sophos XG report.
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My preference is the Sophos XGS, particularly when you team it up with the Sophos Endpoint Protection client and configure it for synchronized security.
Both can be managed through Sophos Central and are available at a decent price for the power they offer the SMB.
I recommend Sophos XGS firewall. It will offer the best solution for malware protection.
Also, I recomend Sophos CIXA with XDR (Sophos Endpoint), so you can use Syncronized Security.