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Azure Firewall vs Sophos XG comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Ranking in Firewalls
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
317
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st)
Azure Firewall
Ranking in Firewalls
19th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (12th)
Sophos XG
Ranking in Firewalls
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
198
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 20.5%, up from 17.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure Firewall is 2.3%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sophos XG is 11.7%, up from 9.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

DineshKumar28 - PeerSpot reviewer
Effective threat prevention with responsive customer support
We are using Fortinet FortiGate as a firewall Fortinet FortiGate has been invaluable. It has helped save costs due to its various features, reliable performance, very good UI, low latency, and stability. The Threat Intel engine in Fortinet FortiGate is highly rated for its effectiveness in…
Charan Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use and configure but could be more robust
The cost of the solution has increased. The robustness of the software could be better. It should be able to cover host-to-host traffic or HTTP traffic. Configurations can be better. The workloads need to still have free access. The encryption and decryption process is not that seamless. It's a little heavy compared to a FortiGate or other firewalls.
Akshit Chhokar - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good performance but needs to improve on the flexibility part
The product has improved the security posture. Sophos XG provides features that are almost the same as those Cisco Firepower devices provide. I would say that a couple of features in Sophos XG are the same as the ones provided by other Cisco devices, which are top-notch. The management tools or log-related solutions that are presented with Sophos are okay but not top-notch when it comes to Cisco. I rate the reporting and visibility tools in Sophos XG a six out of ten compared to Cisco. Sophos xG's integration capabilities do not apply to a limited number of security tools. Cisco provides integration capabilities with many products, while Sophos XG offers integration with a limited number of products. Cisco provides integration capability with almost any tool that is present in the world. Cisco works day and night to ensure that it provides good integration capabilities with the solutions. I recommend the tool to those who plan to use it, especially if you own a very small office where you don't need a product with too many functionalities. I rate the tool a seven out of ten.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The threat prevention is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"Good load balancing feature."
"The solution is very easy to understand. It's not overly complex."
"You can create multiple Virtual Domains (VDOMs), which are treated as separate firewall instances."
"The wireless control is helpful."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the different types of profiling. It has been the most effective for me. The WAF and the antivirus profile are the most effective in network protection."
"It is simple to manage, and there are a lot of functionalities in the same box."
"Overall security features and performance routing is good."
"Great security and connectivity."
"The firewall policy control, URL content control, and antivirus are all the most valuable aspects. Threat prevention is as well quite good."
"Network filtering is valuable. The scalability capability from the cloud-native service helps us a lot because it simplifies our day-to-day maintenance activity."
"Performance and stability are the key features of this product."
"It is easy for me to protect certain ports or even the IP addresses, as well as do whitelisting, blacklisting, and the FQDN when we want virtual machines connected and to protect certain websites."
"It's helped us improve our security posture."
"The solution has many useful features. For example, the solution allows users to create virtual IP addresses."
"The solution should be capable of self-scaling, which is one of the features we like about it."
"In my experience, the solution was easy to use, has lots of features, and is easy to configure."
"The most valuable features of Sophos XG are user-friendliness and it is highly secure."
"Overall, this is a good product and I would recommend it for small to mid-sized customers."
"Sophos firewalls are scalable. They are pretty strong in security. So, when they provide any kind of firewall, they provide all the features such as anti-spam, antivirus, etc."
"Sophos began with a basic version and evolved into something more efficient in terms of performance."
"Sophos XG has cybersecurity. It integrates with the antivirus software."
"A valuable feature involves the solution's manageability."
"Sophos CG is cost-effective, which makes it really suitable for SMB. If you want basic security and more embedded features, go with Sophos XG."
 

Cons

"FortiOS is not simple."
"The cloud features can be improved."
"Improvement is needed in the Web Filter quotas to restrict users with allocated quotas."
"I would suggest that Fortinet add sandboxing to their solution."
"The solution could be more user friendly."
"I need user-behavior analytics, to find threat scenarios from inside the organization, insider attacks. That would be very helpful for us. In addition, I would like next-generation features for small and medium businesses. These businesses require UTM, all in one product. Fortinet must include it."
"The graphical user interface of Fortinet's FortiGate product does not function well with text-based interfaces."
"Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve the protection, it did not prevent us from being attacked. Additionally, Fortinet FortiGate could provide more features for WAF devices. I should not have to purchase two solutions, it would be a benefit to combine these features into one solution."
"The solution lacks artificial intelligence and machine learning. It might be in the roadmap. However, currently, it's not available."
"The threat intelligence part could be better. I don't see why our customers have to get an additional solution with Azure Firewall. It would be great if they made it on par with Palo Alto."
"Azure has new versions including a premium firewall. But I would like to see them not put the premium features on Azure Firewall Premium alone because it is quite expensive."
"It would be nice to be able to create groupings for servers and offer groups of IP addresses."
"The solution should incorporate features similar to competitors like split tunneling."
"They can improve the pricing of Azure Firewall."
"The reporting, logging, and monitoring features, as well as the flexibility of the policies, need to be improved."
"The tool needs to improve the onboarding and transition process for on-prem users."
"While it is possible to configure between two of the solution's devices in the same model, the high available usually fails."
"Technical support is difficult to access."
"When it comes to improvements that the vendor can make, we see that the cloud integration for managing all the firewalls is essentially a replacement of the on-prem version we had and is not sufficiently mature."
"Its price should be improved. It should be cheaper."
"They should improve the hardware. If they can do that, it will be a very good product."
"I would like to have better SSL decryption and HTTP decryption. There should be filtering of SSL and HTTP traffic. Sophos XG consumes a lot of endpoint resources. It consumes a lot of RAM and CPU resources, and they should look into this."
"This solution could be improved with more effective bandwidth. I found that when I enable DDoS detection for our clients, bandwidth is reduced. If DDoS detection is disabled, the bandwidth will be high, but it isn't secure. We recommend that customers enable DDoS detection, but if they need high bandwidth, we recommend Palo Alto and FortiGate instead of Sophos."
"The solution could offer a bit more integration with other systems, with other platforms - just to be able to extend the capability and to interface with other kinds of platforms or systems that I can find on the market as it gives the possibility to improve the level of integration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is fair compared to the other competitors."
"The price could be lower."
"FortiGate's pricing falls within the mid-range when compared to other leading firewall solutions."
"For medium and enterprise organizations, FortiGate is more affordable."
"It is more expensive than Sophos. Fortinet is overall more expensive than Sophos. The small range of Fortinet, such as 60F and 80F, is more expensive than the small range of Sophos. Sophos is cheaper. In addition, if you jump from 80F Series to 100F Series, the price doubles."
"Before choosing a piece of equipment you have to take into account the cost-benefit offered by each one. Sometimes it is not worth paying a very cheap price to have a minimum level of security."
"It is cost-effective, and provides a good value for your money. The pricing, and license renewal, is very reasonable for us."
"Its price could be better."
"Before choosing this solution, we evaluated others, and we found this to be the most cost-effective."
"I rate the product pricing a five out of ten."
"It is pay-as-you-go. So, you pay based on the usage. If I remember it well, there is a basic fee, and there is a traffic fee. It is not per month. It is per hour or something like that. It is not so expensive."
"The total cost of ownership is much less than Palo Alto, Cisco, or any other brand."
"The pricing of Azure Firewall is pay-as-you-go. Fortinet also has a pay-as-you-go model, but Azure's pricing is higher and, with FortiGate, you also have the license."
"The solution is cheaper than other brands. My company has an enterprise contract and we finally got a good price with Azure."
"Azure Firewalls operate on a pay-as-you-go model, similar to cloud services."
"Azure Firewall is more expensive. If Microsoft can make Azure Firewall cheaper, I can see that all clients will think of using it. One client used FortiGate because it is much cheaper. Some clients ask me for Cisco, but in the cloud estimate, I found its cost is the same as Azure Firewall."
"We generally buy it for a three-year license."
"The price is less expensive compared to others."
"There is a license required to use this solution and my customers pay for it annually."
"It is not expensive, it's a reasonable price,"
"Licensing fees are paid monthly."
"We pay for two licenses for the use of Sophos XG annually and it is a flat fee. We do not have everyone going through both of the Sophos XG firewalls a the same time and the Sophos XG on Microsoft Azure is only accessible from the VPN."
"The cost could be lower especially if you want to add other features."
"It is fairly priced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
22%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?
When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...
What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?
From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...
What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?
As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...
What is a better choice, Azure Firewall or Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls?
Azure Firewall Vs. Palo Alto Network NG Firewalls Both solutions provide stellar stability and security. Azure Firew...
How does Azure Firewall compare with Palo Alto Networks VM Series?
Both products are very stable and easily scalable. The setup of Azure Firewall is easy and very user-friendly and the...
Which would you recommend - FortiGate VM or Azure Firewall?
Both of these solutions are excellent options that provide flexible scalability and solid security. Fortinet Fortigat...
Which is better - Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls or Sophos XG?
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls have both great features and performance. I like that Palo Alto has regular threat si...
What are the main differences in features between Sophos XG and FortiGate 80F?
Hi Arvind P , The Sophos XG firewall has a number of models right from XG86 to XG135w under the 1U Desktop Form Fact...
What Is The Biggest Difference Between Sophos UTM and Sophos XG?
The Sophos UTM is a UTM and Sophos XG is the NGFW. First, you must know about the difference between a UTM and NGFW. ...
 

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone, Orange, BT Group, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, NTT Communications, Tata Communications, SoftBank, China Mobile, Singtel, Telus, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telkom Indonesia, Telkom South Africa, Telmex, Telia Company, Telkom Kenya
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Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Firewall vs. Sophos XG and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.