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."Easy to implement, and it is also reliable."
"The most valuable features are the enterprise modeling and the simple interface."
"Fortigate represents a really scalable way of delivering perimeter network security, some level of layer 7 security, WAF, and also a way to create a meshed ADVPN solution."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is load balancing. It can provide central management and VPNA. Additionally, it has enhanced our security environment."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution."
"The pricing is excellent. It's much less expensive than Cisco."
"Reliability is the best feature. We faced some issues when we were setting it up, but the service, portal, and administration are good."
"We are very happy with the general bandwidth agility we have seen from one website to another website."
"The user interface, the UI, is excellent on the solution."
"Beats sophisticated cyber attacks with a superior security appliance."
"Being able to determine our active users vs inactive users has led us to increased productivity through visibility. Also, if an issue was happening with our throughput, then we wouldn't know without research. Now, notifications are more proactively happening."
"A stable and solid solution for protection from external threats and for VPN connections."
"To be honest, all of the features that are provided, all the other vendor will also have. One feature we did find valuable was the CLI, it is more accurate. Additionally, I was happy with the customization, dashboards, access lists and interface."
"The features that are most valuable within the firewall are the IPS as well as the Unified Communications. We also really like the dynamic grouping."
"The most valuable feature is that it's secure."
"The IPS, as well as the malware features, are the two things that we use the most and they're very valuable."
"The stability of Sophos UTM is very good. The solution has been stable since Sophos took over Cyberoam which was the original company providing this solution."
"The firewall itself is very strong and provides great security."
"The implementation with the AWS environment was good."
"Sophos UTM is very user-friendly and has good integration with other solutions."
"It helps us with protection, with concurrent use of the VPN."
"It is a stable product... I rate the solution's technical support a nine out of ten...The initial setup is quite easy because they have all the information on their website."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos UTM is reporting, it is flexible. I can monitor the end user's devices, even when they are not on my network. It has good drill-down capabilities."
"Sophos UTM has a good user interface and granular security controls."
"There are just some services that aren't available. For example, the Ethernet or point-to-point protocols. They could add these services to their product offering - especially services for ISPs."
"The solution could be more user friendly."
"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."
"I would like to see better pricing in the next release, as well as a simplification of the installation."
"The initial setup is complex."
"Palo Alto has a feature called WildFire Analysis that is unavailable in FortiGate. WildFire is better than a sandbox because it can address zero-day threats and vulnerabilities. It can immediately identify zero-day threats from the cloud."
"A couple of things I've seen that need improvement, especially in terms of a hard coding. The driver-level active moment really is out-of-the-box and we have to have contact the customer support and sometimes it is difficult to resolve."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a firewall solution and once it's deployed, you can rest assured that your system is secure."
"The only con that I have really seen with it is the reporting structure. FirePOWER is good. It has been a great help because, before that, it was not good at all."
"It should have packets, deep level inspections and controls, like the features which other IPS solutions used to have."
"I have found that Cisco reporting capabilities are not as rich as other products, so the reporting could be improved."
"We are looking for software taxi capabilities."
"It is not the newest, cutting-edge technology"
"The solution has not had any layer upgrades. It does not have layer five and upwards, it only has up to layer four. This has caused some problems for us."
"Cisco Firepower is not completely integrated with Active Directory. We are trying to use Active Directory to restrict users by using some security groups that are not integrated within the Cisco Firepower module. This is the main issue that we are facing."
"I would like it if there was a centralized way to manage policies, then sticking with the network functions on the actual devices. That is probably the thing that frustrates me the most. I want a way that you can manage multiple policies at several different locations, all at one site. You then don't have to worry about the connectivity piece, in case you are troubleshooting because connectivity is down."
"Updates come out agonizingly slowly, a trickle."
"It's stable, but the reaction time of the GUI is terrible."
"The solution's technical support for India needs to be improved."
"This product could use some improvement with web filtering. It takes a lot of time and effort to set up and maintain."
"There needs to be some improvement in the IPsec VPN. There is implementation only support. I have version one. I'd be most interested in having IP version two from the protocol."
"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 UI can be cumbersome and, sometimes, features are not where you think they should be."
"I don't really have any notes for improvements."
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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