We performed a comparison between Check Point CloudGuard Network Security and Sophos XG based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is notable for its cutting-edge threat prevention, centralized administration, and focus on safeguarding cloud environments. Sophos XG is highly regarded for its robust capabilities, user-friendly interface, and extensive defense against harmful threats.
Check Point CloudGuard Network Security could benefit from enhancements in the support system, feature additions, data protection visibility, DLP feature, configuration process, integration, documentation, and flexibility. Sophos XG requires improvements in antivirus, graphical interface, performance, logging, support, setup process, configuration, functionality, sales policies, firewall upgrades, network monitoring, content filtering, GDPR features, search engine, stability, user-friendliness, firmware upgrades, and remote access.
Service and Support: Some customers appreciate Check Point's technical support, while others are dissatisfied with the slow response time. Sophos XG's support receives mixed reviews, with some customers finding it helpful and responsive, while others express dissatisfaction with unhelpful and unresponsive assistance.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is described as straightforward and uncomplicated, although some users note that it can be challenging and necessitates technical proficiency. Sophos XG's initial setup is generally considered simple and straightforward, although certain users find it difficult or extremely challenging. The ease of setup is influenced by factors such as familiarity with the product and technical expertise.
Pricing: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is considered costly for setup, whereas Sophos XG provides flexible pricing based on functionality. Check Point's pricing varies with organization size and country, while Sophos offers competitive pricing, particularly for educational institutions.
ROI: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security offers a cost-effective solution with improved performance, providing an ROI ranging from 80% to 85%. Sophos XG boasts an ROI of 100% or higher, reducing support costs and enhancing security practices.
Comparison Results: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security outperforms Sophos XG. Users find the setup of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security to be simple and intuitive. Check Point offers a wider range of valuable features, including VPN Blade, IPS Blade, URL filtering, and Applications Control Blade, along with advanced threat prevention capabilities and centralized security.
"The features that I have found most valuable are that it is good to use, and most importantly, the pricing. The customer especially likes the discount when they trade up or something like that."
"The pricing is excellent. It's much less expensive than Cisco."
"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."
"Provides good firewall security and has great VPN features."
"The signature database and zero-day detection are Fortinet FortiGate's most valuable features."
"Fortinet FortiGate's reliability is valuable."
"This solution has helped our organization by having strong functions and a reliable firewall."
"Our security improved from being able to put in rules and close off unwanted traffic."
"Advanced check prevention is a great feature that provides threat intelligence at speed."
"I like how straightforward it is and simple it is to implement in the cloud."
"Its integration and use of features, such as advanced threat prevention, have helped us a lot with malware prevention and also with avoiding exposure to false positives."
"I find it really useful that CloudGuard supports all the main players on the Public Clouds market including AWS, GCP, and Azure, as well as some exotic ones like Alibaba Cloud, Oracle Cloud, and IBM Cloud."
"Check Point CloudGuard is quick to deploy and easy for the customer to use."
"The tool's most valuable features are firewalls and IPS."
"This solution has good scalability and stability."
"The most valuable feature is the centralized dashboard, which is used for managing all of the Check Point Security Gateways."
"Web filtering is easy enough to deploy, manage, or make exceptions to."
"The SD-WAN feature stands out as the most valuable aspect."
"It is feature-rich, I like the server authentication, and the reports are good."
"The solution seems pretty stable. We've had no issues so far."
"The SL VPNs are the most valuable feature. I have a lot of systems out of the head office that need to connect to the local networks, and they all connect wirelessly via the Sophos VPN client."
"I like the fact that it can self remove malware and do updates on the cloud via Sophos Central."
"The stability of Sophos XG is good, it has good performance."
"The product offers many great features."
"In terms of what could be improved, the SD-WAN is quite difficult, because if you install the new box, 15 is okay, but if you change from an old configuration, if there is already configuration and a policy when you change to SD-WAN, you must change the whole policy that you see in the interface."
"The updates Fortinet provides are sometimes unstable."
"Cisco Meraki products are rising very quickly in the cloud and the connected era. Meraki products offer much better ROI, upgradability, and manageability."
"It would be nice if backups could more easily migrate between different models."
"Fortinet currently has many products bundled with FortiGate including the basic firewall and load balancer, and I think that that they need to have separate product portfolios for each of these specialized services."
"The initial setup is complex."
"The license renewal process, annual renewal price, and the web application firewall features should be improved."
"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."
"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."
"It can be difficult to install properly without prior training"
"The licensing structure is unclear, so a transparent and flexible licensing structure would be preferable."
"There is room for improvement in addressing bugs and support issues."
"Improvements needed include better integration with Azure features to match on-premises capabilities."
"CloudGuard Network Security could be improved in the area of upgrading in place."
"CloudGuard functions just like any other firewall. It functions very well. The only thing that could maybe be improved would be to integrate some tools that are not integrated with the SmartConsole, like the SmartView Monitor that we need to open on a different application to access."
"Documentation might become too complex or too spread out, especially for newcomers."
"The interface of Sophos XG could be improved. I would prefer the Sophos XG to have an interface for the technician who is setting it up similar to the Sophos SG. I felt the Sophos SG user interface was superior. however, in terms of the functionality of the product, Sophos XG is in many ways more powerful than the Sophos SG. I have no complaints about the quality of the product or the end result. For someone who has used both, I preferred the old interface to the new one."
"In Sophos XG, the throughput for larger networks is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"I would like to next release to be able to support on-premise deployment. The construction of the rules within the firewall could also use some improvement."
"There have been some issues when upgrading. For some reason, parts of the configuration become unconfigured, I then have to reconfigure it. I should not need to keep reconfiguring it after upgrades."
"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 user interface could be better."
"Sophos XG could improve by making the remote access and VPN better."
"The initial set up process can be a little tricky, especially when you are registering with Sophos using your registration number. Setup is not necessarily complex, but it's not trouble-free. You do have connectivity issues at the initial setup with registering the device on the Sophos platform to access the advanced features. It doesn't always go through the first time around. That may be an issue with the quality of our automation. I'm not sure exactly what it is."
More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security Pricing and Cost Advice →
Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is ranked 8th in Firewalls with 119 reviews while Sophos XG is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 192 reviews. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is rated 8.6, while Sophos XG is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security writes "The solution has good threat emulation, threat extraction, and reporting features". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos XG writes "Easy to use and deploy with an improved pricing structure in place". Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is most compared with Azure Firewall, VMware NSX, Cisco Secure Firewall, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation and Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, whereas Sophos XG is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos XGS, SonicWall TZ and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. See our Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs. Sophos XG report.
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