We performed a comparison between Sophos UTM and WatchGuard Firebox 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."You can create multiple Virtual Domains (VDOMs), which are treated as separate firewall instances."
"The payment function for applications is good."
"I have found Fortinet FortiGate to be scalable."
"This is an easy solution to deploy."
"The SD-WAN is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable features are that it is very simple to configure and to manage."
"LinkGreat firewall capabilities"
"This solution has helped our organization by having strong functions and a reliable firewall."
"We use Sophos UTM as our main firewall with all its features included. Mainly, it controls all of our network perimeter security: firewall, IDS/IPS, and web application firewall (including VoIP)."
"Advanced protection (Sophos Sandstorm) - Protects against crypto viruses in real-time."
"Sophos UTM has improved the porting section. It has improved security by seeing the gaps. For example, when you discover that an entry has been using a certain application, with Sophos UTM acting as a Layer 7 firewall, you can block the application, not the port."
"I like the web filtering options."
"The features that I've known to be most valuable are both the web security features as well as the web firewall capabilities. As a partner of Sophos firewall, we have some clients and they are using Sophos firewall UTM and we are using it as well."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos UTM is the endpoint protection feature."
"It allows me to easily connect with more than forty-five remote sites and more than fifty remote users between IPsec and SSL VPN, applying the web filter and application filter to ensure a secure connection."
"The product is extremely intuitive."
"The client is easy to use and stable"
"It's hard to pick one feature over another. But if I had to pick one, the UTM would be the most valuable because of the notification. I get notified via email if there is any type of threat detection or alert, telling me something is wrong."
"[A] valuable feature would be the branch office. We have five offices throughout the United States, and it coordinates the connections of those offices."
"Regarding the reporting, I was in the Dimension server earlier today. It's very powerful. I like it. And the management features are easy to use. I like the fact that I can open up the System Manager client or I can just do it through the web if I'm making a quick change."
"HostWatch makes it so I can see, in real-time, activity in the event that there is something weird happening on the network. This simplifies my job."
"The set up was quite straightforward and we handled it in-house. It took a few hours to deploy the product."
"What I found most valuable in WatchGuard Firebox is that it's a functional platform that works, and each of its features works well. The solution also has good reporting and dashboard capabilities. I also find the overall performance of WatchGuard Firebox great."
"One of my favorite features is the Geolocation service, where you can actually block specific activity or IP addresses registered to certain countries. For example, I don't want any web traffic from Russia or North Korea. I may even lock down certain policies down to 'I only want U.S. IP addresses.' I find that very useful."
"We sometimes have issues with FortiGate's routing table in the latest firmware update. We had to downgrade the device because our customers complained about bugs."
"In the future, I would like to see improvements made to cloud-based management."
"This product needs to have an analysis feature, rather than having the analysis done through the integration of a different product."
"The process of configuring firewall rules appears excessively complex."
"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."
"I would like to see more advanced developments of a wireless controller in the future."
"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 FortiGate could improve by adding FortiAnalyzer to its solution, we should not have to use another solution. FortiAnalyzer can provide more detailed information."
"I would like to see the SD-WAN feature improved."
"The solution needs to do better at covering mobile devices, although they may have an integrated solution for that purpose."
"The UI can be cumbersome and, sometimes, features are not where you think they should be."
"Finding information about Sophos’ sizing guidelines can actually be difficult. Also, Sophos does not make it clear what they mean by “users” when you are sizing a firewall, which then leads to undersized implementations."
"The product could be simplified and made more self-explanatory."
"VPN needs IKEv2, but it’s in the roadmap. Also, all new, cool features will only come to the new Sophos XG Firewall."
"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."
"We need a better VPN client for the customers."
"Some of the configuration options are somewhat confusing."
"Its documentation could be improved. Sometimes, you need to search a bit longer to find what you are looking for."
"I don't think I can get a full-blown DNS client from it. I've been trying to have DNS services. It has forwarding, but I don't get the services of a full DNS client. My main difficulty with it is that I can't run a complete service. I need NTP. I need DNS. I need DHCP for my domain, but I only get forwarding. As far as I can tell, I don't get caching and the kinds of reporting and registration needed to host a DNS for a domain. I have to have a separate solution for that."
"The performance of the solution's processor needs to be faster."
"There are a couple of things I wished that it would do, but I can't think of those off the top of my head."
"We use WatchGuard to manage our failover for internet. If a primary internet goes down, it does a failover to the secondary the internet. However, what it doesn't do so well is that if the primary internet has a lot of latency but it's not completely down, it doesn't do a failover to the backup in a timely manner."
"The user interface for WatchGuard Firebox has room for improvement. Right now, it's a bit complex to work with and could be easier."
"We were able to take from an older configuration, build a new one quickly, and get it up and running, which didn't take long, but there was some pain around it."
Sophos UTM is ranked 3rd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 110 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 4th in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 79 reviews. Sophos UTM is rated 8.4, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Sophos UTM writes "It's a highly stable platform with very few hardware issues". On the other hand, the top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". Sophos UTM is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Untangle NG Firewall, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, SonicWall TZ and Check Point NGFW. See our Sophos UTM vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
See our list of best Unified Threat Management (UTM) vendors and best Firewalls vendors.
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