We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW 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 NGFW is praised for its extensive security features, centralized management, and virtualization capabilities. It is highly regarded in terms of comprehensive protection and adaptability. Sophos XG is known for its usability, user-friendly interface, and straightforward installation process. Both options provide robust threat defense and the ability to expand as needed.
Check Point NGFW, needs to improve various aspects, including integration with other infrastructures, hardware upgrades, cost and pricing, stability and security, UI, complexity issues, redundancy options, and memory management. Sophos XG needs improvements in antivirus features, graphical interface and performance, bandwidth management and VPN capabilities, reporting and user management, support and response time, and specific issues and feature requests.
Service and Support: Some customers have found Check Point NGFW's customer service to be helpful and responsive, while others believe there is room for improvement. Sophos XG's support has received both positive and negative feedback. Some customers have found it to be good and helpful, while others have been dissatisfied with unhelpful and unresponsive support.
Ease of Deployment: The initial setup for Check Point NGFW can range in difficulty, with some users finding it simple while others find it more challenging. Knowledge and experience may be required for certain configurations and migrations. The initial setup for Sophos XG is generally seen as uncomplicated and straightforward, although some users may struggle if they are unfamiliar with the product.
Pricing: Check Point NGFW is known for its high setup cost, particularly when compared to other products. Users find it challenging to add new licensing to existing devices, especially for larger enterprise-level devices. Sophos XG provides flexible pricing options based on the required functionality, offering reasonable and competitive pricing, particularly for educational institutions.
ROI: Check Point NGFW stands out for its cost savings, simplicity, and effective security enforcement. Sophos XG offers a high ROI by reducing support expenses and enhancing security practices.
Comparison Results: Sophos XG is the favored product when compared to Check Point NGFW. Users find the initial setup of Sophos XG to be simple. They appreciate the functionality and user interface of Sophos XG, as well as its extensive protection against threats. The pricing for Sophos XG is considered fair and the technical support is satisfactory.
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is load balancing. It can provide central management and VPNA. Additionally, it has enhanced our security environment."
"It's very fast and easy to configure."
"The CLI is robust and powerful, enabling rapid, consistent changes via SSH."
"It's great for capturing the traffic and troubleshooting it."
"Anti-Spam web content filterinG."
"Its user interface is good, and it is always working fine."
"I like that they have given me a solution at a fair price."
"It's user-friendly and easy to operate."
"It is easy to configure and it is a valuable antivirus protection. I especially like the IPS feature of this product."
"It secures my organization. With the application blade, I can make security as application based and the custom application is also very useful. With identity awareness blades we get insights on our local users who are accessing/passing through the respective rule as users. We also use the DLP, IPS, and VPN features."
"The detection rate for any cyberattacks/suspicious activity is very high (more than 90%)."
"Check Point NGFW provides essential security, featuring no-obligation access for secure connections, strong intrusion prevention, and comprehensive antivirus protection."
"The features that are important include: IPS, sandbox, SandBlast, Anti-Bot, and URL filtering."
"It is a very friendly platform and easy to configure."
"The Smart Dashboard allows for rule creation and administration and management and is user-friendly."
"Check Point NGFW is easy to use, flexible and provides good performance. The security of the product is excellent, we do not have to do a lot of patching or upgrades because of vulnerabilities."
"It is simple to use."
"It is feature-rich, I like the server authentication, and the reports are good."
"The stability has been excellent."
"The most valuable features are the reporting, dashboards, and graphical user interface. It gives a good overall picture of what is happening over the network."
"Sophos XG is very useful, it does many things."
"The SD-WAN feature stands out as the most valuable aspect."
"The tool's most valuable feature is threat protection and DLP features. So far, basic DLP features like content protection and blocking. Furthermore, for remote users, features such as back filtering and application control are available, allowing for command and control from our side. It is very easy to understand policy applications."
"The installation is easy. There is a wizard that can be used for a single connection making it simple and if you have multiple connections you can configure it manually."
"The debugging and troubleshooting has room for improvement."
"With FortiGate, the main complaint that I have heard is about the technical support."
"Fortinet FortiGate is not very easy to use. The navigation could be improved to make it easier to use."
"FortiGate should have a better way of detecting and managing the system memory because otherwise if the memory is too low, a system restart is required."
"They should improve the interface to make it more user-friendly."
"I would like to see better pricing in the next release, as well as a simplification of the installation."
"The solution could be more secure and stable."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having better visibility. Palo Alto has better visibility."
"The only downside to Check Point, is, due to the vast expanse of configurable options, it does become easily overwhelming."
"Check Point NGFW Firewall requires frequent updates to build more user-friendly dashboards."
"There are some issues compared to other products. Ease of use is one."
"Check Point Smart Dashboard does not support my Apple MacBook Air. It only supports Windows versions."
"Scalability should be improved."
"Potential improvements could be made around simplifying VPN functionality and configuration."
"We find the GUI to be wrong and the CLI doesn't always show all of the connections."
"I have had some issues in the past with the desktop client being slow to come up for logging in, and then slow to respond to screen changes, however, overall, it really hasn't been too bad."
"The UI needs improvement because it can be a little weird at times."
"The VPN is in need of 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."
"The pricing has gotten much higher."
"I'd like the dashboard to be improved. It could be a bit more customizable."
"Its user interface is a little bit slow."
"SD-WAN needs to be improved because it often fails at the network security level."
"Our clients use Karios, and while it integrates well with it, the integration could be improved."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 277 reviews while Sophos XG is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 192 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while Sophos XG is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Check Point NGFW writes "Good antivirus protection and URL filtering with very good user identification capabilities". 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 NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Azure Firewall and OPNsense, whereas Sophos XG is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos XGS, SonicWall TZ and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Check Point NGFW vs. Sophos XG report.
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