We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Sophos UTM 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 IPsec tunnels are very easily created, and quite interoperable with devices from other vendors."
"The most valuable features are simplicity, management, and that it's constantly evolving."
"The reporting and monitoring are very good."
"In terms of security, we have not experienced any security flaws or loopholes, and it has proven to be quite stable."
"Our security improved from being able to put in rules and close off unwanted traffic."
"The stability of the solution is excellent, as it is with other Fortinet products."
"What I like the most is the configuration and that it's simple, and straightforward to maintain."
"User-friendly and affordable security solution that's recommended for SMB customers. This solution has good technical support."
"With Cisco, there are a lot of features such as the network map. Cisco builds the whole network map of the machines you have behind your firewall and gives you insight into the vulnerabilities and attributes that the host has. Checkpoint and Fortinet don't have that functionality directly on the firewall."
"I love the ASDM (Adaptive Security Device Manager) which is the management suite. It's a GUI and you're able to see everything at a glance without using the command line. There are those who love the CLI, but with ASDM it is easier to see where everything is going and where the problems are."
"Cisco tech is always good and helpful. I would rate them as 10 out of 10."
"The most valuable Cisco Secure Firewall features are options, features, and ease of deployment because it's an appliance."
"Once you add Firepower onto to it and you start enabling some of its features, you get some IDS/IPS involved with it and you can even do web filtering."
"The Packet Tracer is a really good tool. If someone calls because they're having problems, you can easily create fake traffic without having to do an extended packet capture. You can see, straight away, if there's a firewall rule allowing that traffic in the direction you're trying to troubleshoot."
"Cisco ASA is very strong."
"Its VPN and ASN features are very stable."
"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."
"Sophos UTM has a good user interface and granular security controls."
"The solution is scalable."
"It has allowed us to design a bespoke cloud space for our clients, while still having an excellent level of protection."
"Good basic firewall functions with advanced firewall scanning."
"It works well without any maintenance. So far, it has worked pretty well regardless of the traffic."
"It has helped by identifying threats within the company. If there are computers or servers that are compromised, then we are able to identify them right away in the system."
"The most valuable features of the solution are application filtering and web filtering."
"When we cluster the two Fortinet FortiGate boxes together we have some issues."
"There could be more integration between the logging and analytical platforms to make it more seamless and integrated."
"We would like to see a better training platform implemented."
"The web-cache feature which was previously on the FortiGate device, but was deleted with the recent upgrade should be returned. It was a very valuable feature for us."
"They've become quite expensive."
"It can be a little bit more user-friendly in terms of policy definition and implementation. It seems a little bit complicated, and it could be simplified."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having a frequent ask questions(FAQ) area for people to receive quick answers to popular questions. Additionally, it would be beneficial to have an SMS notification feature. For example, if you cannot access your email you could receive an SMS message."
"I'm not sure if it's something that they already have or are developing something, however, we need some dedicated features for container security."
"The Cisco ASA device needs overall improvement, as configurations alone do not completely secure my network."
"The one thing that the ASAs don't have is a central management point. We have a lot of our environments on FTD right now. So, we are using a Firewall Management Center (FMC) to manage all those. The ASAs don't really have that, but they are easy to use if you physically go into them and manage them."
"This is an older product and has reached end-of-life."
"Firepower's user experience should be a little bit better."
"We are Cisco partners, and when we recommend Cisco FirePower to customers, they always think that FirePower is bad. For a single installation of FirePower, if I have to write about 18 tickets to Cisco, it's a big problem. There was an issue was related to Azure. We had Active Directory in Azure. The clients had to connect to FirePower through Azure. We had a lot of group policies. After two group policies, we had to make groups in Azure, and they had to sign in and sign back. It was a triple-layer authentication, and there was a big problem, so we didn't use it."
"I have used Fortinet, Palo Alto, and Check Point previously and I prefer the process of everything working together."
"I would like to see the inclusion of more advanced antivirus features in the next release of this solution."
"The solution's deployment is time-consuming, which should be minimized and made more user-friendly for us."
"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."
"As it stands right now, when we have an internet failure on WAN1, it takes several minutes before our WAN2 connection picks up the traffic"
"The solution could be improved by adding cloud soundboxing."
"I am going to flat out say technical support is terrible. Being a Platinum level customer, I am not happy with the support."
"Needs to improve the certificate management (ex. Let's Encrypt support)."
"The solution is not scalable."
"There were a lot of features and functionality in Sophos SG UTM but nothing was state of the art in terms of technology. You did not get the latest functions. It was very monolithic as it was based on an old Linux PuTTY system."
"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."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Sophos UTM is ranked 1st in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 110 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Sophos UTM is rated 8.4. 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 UTM writes "It's a highly stable platform with very few hardware issues". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and SonicWall NSa, whereas Sophos UTM is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Untangle NG Firewall. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Sophos UTM report.
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